Defiant Trajectories

Mapping out Slavic Women Writers Routes

Edited by

Katja Mihurko Poniž Biljana Dojčinović Maša Grdešić Kataložni zapis o publikaciji (CIP) pripravili v Narodni in univerzitetni knjižnici v Ljubljani COBISS.SI-ID 56820227 ISBN 978-961-94672-7-5 (PDF) Defiant Trajectories

Mapping out Slavic Women Writers Routes

Edited by

Katja Mihurko Poniž Biljana Dojčinović Maša Grdešić

Defiant Trajectories Table of Contents 5

6 Introduction 10 Maša Grdešić The Gender of Croatian Modernity: Marija Jurić Zagorka and Ivana Brlić-Mažuranić

22 Ksenija Rakočević Divna Veković – Our Heroine

32 Monika Rudaś-Grodzka, Katarzyna Nadana-Sokolowska, Emilia Kolinko Maria Konopnicka (1842–1910): In Search of Individual Emancipation

46 Ekaterina Artemyuk The Life and Literary Work of Russian Women Writers of the Early 20th Century: Their Artistic Merit, Cultural Contribution, and Meaning for the Present

58 Biljana Dojčinović The European Routes of Jelena J. Dimitrijević

72 Katja Mihurko Poniž Zofka Kveder – Slavic Cultural and Feminist Icon of the Early 20th Century 6

Introduction Defiant Trajectories 7

In a seminal work in the history Many middle-class women then of feminist thought, in the essay A realized that they could make a liv- Room of One’s Own (1928), Virginia ing by writing and that there was Woolf writes that at the end of the a world, albeit in the realm of do- 18th century a change came about mesticity, in which a woman was that was of greater importance the one who set the rules. Howev- than the Crusades or the Wars of er, their lives were based on wheth- the Roses, nd that change was that er they decided to get married or a woman from the middle class whether they remained single. started writing. If we were to de- th velop this idea further, we could In the late 19 century, women say that another similarly impor- began to look for alternatives to tant change took place at the end such trajectories. If, for married of the 19th century – that is when middle-class women until then, mi- a middle-class woman, if she had gration to other places was large- enough financial resources, began ly the consequence of their hus- to travel quite freely. Both turning band’s career, in the last decades th points changed the course of life of the 19 century they began to for many women in the Western discover new spaces of freedom world. The middle-class writer, as – both literally and figuratively. Nancy Armstrong in her book De- Compared to the trajectories of sire and Domestic Fiction. A Politi- contemporaries who chose the ex- cal history of the Novel has shown, pected trajectories, theirs defied has created a special type of nov- the expectations of society. They el. Domestic fiction, as Armstrong began to map out the routes by convincingly argues, “mapped out themselves. a new domain of discourse as it in- It is therefore no coincidence vested common forms of social be- that the Women Writers Cultural haviour with the emotional values Route project focuses not only on of women”. 8 tracking stations on the life tra- wanted to return to France, but jectories of the women writers we her last journeys remain a mystery, want to mark on a cultural route and so does her death. but also on the very act of discover- ing new spaces. Papers in the vol- In Polish literature, the most ume, which are extended research cosmopolitan writer of her time papers presented at the Women is Maria Konopnicka, present- Writers Route conference in Lju- ed in this volume by Monika bljana in April 2019, are connected Rudaś-Grodzka, Katarzyna Nada- by a common thread of crossing na-Sokolowska, and Emilia Kolinko. actual and symbolic boundaries. On the threshold of the fifth dec- Croatian writers Marija Jurić Zag- ade of her life, Konopnicka decided orka and Ivana Brlić Mažuranić, as to leave her homeland and then presented by Maša Grdešić, each lived for ten years in France, Swit- sought spaces of freedom in their zerland, Germany, and Italy. She own way. While Zagorka, as a sin- went on holiday to the Adriatic Sea gle woman (after bravely escaping several times. Her postcards draw from a marriage of convenience), her itinerary to family and friends. crossed the boundaries set by her Maria Konopnicka was esteemed gender at the beginning of the 20th both in the Polish homeland and century and aroused the indigna- across its borders, and during her tion of the guardians of tradition, lifetime she was translated into Ivana Brlić Mažuranić felt most various Slavic languages. Thus, her free when she retired to the world literary texts also drew their own of imagination and created literary itinerary. texts. The varied political history of th th The Montenegrin intellectu- the late 19 and early 20 centu- al, physician and translator Div- ries led to the migration of Russian na Veković, presented by Ksenija and Soviet writers, who, if history Rakočević in this volume, sought had taken place differently, would freedom in a different way. The probably not have chosen such path led her from Montenegro to trajectories themselves. Anna Paris, where she successfully com- Akhmatova, Marina Tsvetaeva and pleted her medical studies. During Zinaida Gippius, as Ekaterina Ar- the Great War, she was a doctor on temyuk shows, lived in different the Salonika front, and the Second parts of Europe. The age in which World War found her in Yugosla- they lived had a particularly strong via, where she had come to cele- impact on their trajectories. But brate the anniversary of the Battle it was not only their lives but also of Kosovo. Towards the end of the their literary writings that were in- war, when it was clear that the po- fluenced by ground-breaking his- litical regime would change, she torical events. Defiant Trajectories 9

The Serbian writer Jelena J. Dim- en writers did not enter the cul- itrijević is undoubtedly the great- tural field until the second half of est traveller among the women the 19th century, thus these two writers we present in this volume women were pioneers in discov- as she has travelled seven seas ering new paths. Many times, they and three oceans, as the title of had to clear their way on their own one of her travelogues says. From as no one before them had done the beginning of her writing ca- so. The more numerous they were, reer, she paid particular attention the more paths there were. There- to the position of women. As a fore, mapping the paths of women woman who showed an interest in writers is not only creating maps, Islamic culture and fluently spoke which we then follow and by doing Turkish, she was able to cross so enrich and deepen our knowl- thresholds that others could not. edge of female literary authorship, As the author of the article about but what is more, by following her, Biljana Dojčinović, points out their footsteps we celebrate wom- in America, her distance from the en’s strength, innovation, and cre- European homeland also enabled ativity. her to have a different view of the old continent. Jelena J. Dimitrijević developed many friendships dur- ing her travels in different foreign countries, but she also had many compatriots in Yugoslavia whom she appreciated and correspond- ed with.

Among them was a Sloveni- an-born multicultural author Zofka Kveder. Katja Mihurko Poniž fol- lows Kveder’s itinerary but also the traces she left in her relationships with other people – many intellec- tuals at the time saw her as a role model, a kind of cultural and fem- inist icon of Central and Southern Europe. Mihurko Poniž also ex- plores how Kveder’s life and works were interpreted in obituaries.

In many Slavic literatures (the exceptions in this volume are Pol- ish and Russian literatures), wom- Maša Grdešić

The Gender of Croatian Modernity: Marija Jurić Zagorka and Ivana Brlić-Mažuranić

Marija Jurić Zagorka Ivana Brlić-Mažuranić Defiant Trajectories 11

Over the course of the past Since the beginning of the ten to fifteen years, we have seen nineteenth century or since the a surge of academic interest in Croatian literary revival, so-called women writers among Croatian “newer” Croatian literature was literary scholars, due largely to the characterized by a strong social growing influence of feminist theo- and political function. This changed ry and cultural studies. This seems somewhat at the turn of the twen- especially to be the case with early tieth century, but mostly in theory, 20th-century women writers who because in practice Croatian aes- were previously marginalized or theticism was still firmly tied to re- largely invisible in the Croatian lit- alism and a duty to social critique. erary canon, which was the result This is especially true in the case of an attempt to conform to the of the novel, which became more Western canon privileges of mod- modern far more slowly than did ernist writing and “high” art over poetry or the short story. Accord- popular literature, as well as of ing to Krešimir Nemec’s complete male over female authors (Grgić history of the Croatian novel, the 2009, 18). most productive novelists in the period of aestheticism were ac- Two women writers currently tually authors of popular novels attracting the most academic at- (1998, 8). At the time, modernist tention are Marija Jurić Zagorka and avant-garde tendencies in the and Ivana Brlić-Mažuranić. Al- novel were rare, weak or modest, though regularly read and loved by a belief in the utilitarian function a wide audience, they have largely of literature was strongly upheld, remained relegated to the fringes and clear communication with the of the literary canon – Zagorka as reader was also still seen as crucial a writer of popular historical ro- (44). mances and Brlić-Mažuranić as an author of children’s literature. 12

Even though most of the novels which were less interesting to lit- written up until the end of the First erary historians concerned with World War were either popular or “high” literature, were therefore realist, and attempts at avant-gar- omitted from the prevailing image de aesthetic radicalism were mod- of literary modernism, specifically est in all genres, Croatian literary popular and children’s literature, history, always striving to establish as well as literary works continuing parallels with European and West- the realist and naturalist tradition ern literature, focused on literary (Grgić 2009, 20). texts demonstrating at least some modernist characteristics and Only a complete history of Cro- therefore disregarded the majori- atian literature or the Croatian ty of novels written in that period. novel, such as Krešimir Nemec’s, This process came under scrutiny which endeavours to explore lit- only recently, when Croatian lit- erary styles and texts beyond the erary historians such as Krešimir official narrative of modernism’s th Nemec (1998) and Zoran Kravar dominance in early 20 -century (2005) became interested in mod- Croatian literature, can reveal the ernism as a historical and cultural fact that Zagorka’s popular histor- era, finally examining literary works ical romances were not an excep- beyond the limits of the modernist tion or a relic of an abandoned canon. Kristina Grgić, employing literary past, but were actually at Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of the the forefront of a very lively and literary field and drawing on Astra- widespread literary trend (1998, dur Eysteinsson’s constructivist ap- 13). According to Nemec, popular proach to the concept of modern- historical novels flourished both ism in her analysis of Marija Jurić in fin de siècle literature (66) and Zagorka’s position in Croatian lit- in the period 1914–1945 (86). The erary history, explains that literary latter period is also defined by the modernism should be understood emergence of an increasing num- as the dominant but by no means ber of published women authors, the only literary paradigm within most of which are only now being the wider historical and cultural (re)discovered (87). era (2009, 20). Grgić goes on to say * that the dominant understanding of modernist literature, both in the Again, Marija Jurić Zagorka and Western and the Croatian literary Ivana Brlić-Mažuranić are the most canon, is the result of literary criti- widely researched women writers cism’s privileging of certain literary within contemporary Croatian lit- forms and techniques typical of erary criticism, particularly owing “high” literature (20). In this way, to their respective positions in other forms of literary production, Croatian literary history, and their Defiant Trajectories 13 differing but equally interesting at- According to Detoni Dujmić, they titudes towards women’s creativity were torn between literature and and the woman’s place in culture pedagogy, between their demand- and society. ing daily jobs as teachers (or wives and mothers) and their creative Zagorka’s literary texts, mostly ambitions (22). They were encour- novels but also plays, were regu- aged to write didactic stories in larly disparaged by her contempo- the Croatian language for children rary male critics, not only because and other women for the purpose they were popular and therefore of countering or overshadowing inconsistent with the proclaimed popular German-language nov- cultural values of aestheticism and els, but were then – like Zagorka modernism, but also because they – undermined for doing so (Nemec openly displayed their feminist pol- 1998, 75). Didactic, popular, and itics (Jakobović Fribec 2008, 24). On children’s literature were the only the other hand, Brlić-Mažuranić’s areas of the literary field women fairy tales were universally ac- were welcomed into, precisely be- claimed (Zima 2019, 7-8), but these cause these were not perceived as seemingly opposing attitudes to- true art or as competition to works wards the two writers were in fact written by men. the effect and result of the same dominant ideas of the feminine Marija Jurić Zagorka and Ivana and femininity (Felski 1995). Brlić-Mažuranić were contempo- raries (Dujić 2011, 94), writing pop- The Croatian National Revival ular and children’s literature in an in the nineteenth century had en- era that was “historically complex listed the help of women in the and abounding in events, histo- fight to establish a national lan- riographically polyvalent, ideolog- guage and culture. Nevertheless, ically divergent, divided by class as Dunja Detoni Dujmić points out and gender, and multi-poetic in in her important book on women terms of culture and literature” writers in Croatia, Ljepša polovica (Zima 2019, 13). Although it might književnosti [The Lovelier Half of be easier to focus on the differenc- Literature], it soon became clear es between the two authors and that women were only needed as the contrasting reception of their patronesses of male artists and work among contemporary critics educators of children, and that this and later literary historians, there cooperation was largely pragmat- are also many similarities between ic in nature and short-lived (1998, Zagorka and Brlić-Mažuranić (Dujić 16). Most women writers active at 2011, 101). the beginning of the twentieth cen- tury alternated between teaching, Most of the biographical infor- humanitarian work, and writing. mation on Marija Jurić Zagorka 14 has been gleaned from her own marriage and returned to Zagreb. autobiographical texts as well as from her novel Kamen na cesti [A In 1896, she succeeded in pub- Stone in the Road], which is fre- lishing her first political article in quently read as based on her own Obzor [The Horizon], a leading life (Jakobović-Fribec 2008, 30). Croatian newspaper. Most of her Only recently, Zagorka scholars early articles are pro-Croatian and such as Slavica Jakobović-Fribec anti-Hungarian in tone. She faced and the team behind Marija Jurić many hardships while working at Zagorka’s Memorial Apartment in Obzor, such as gender discrimina- Zagreb have more strongly relied tion, contempt from colleagues, on historiographical research in accusations of immoral behaviour, an attempt to answer the remain- political persecution, and meagre ing questions about Zagorka’s life. wages, but through hard work and One such question is the date of incredible persistence Zagorka be- Zagorka’s birth, which had been came the first woman journalist in erroneously cited for decades un- Croatia. She was also a feminist til Jakobović-Fribec discovered and and a labour rights activist. She or- published the correct date, which ganized the first Croatian women was 2 March 1873 (2008, 16). workers union in 1897.

Zagorka was born into a mid- In 1903, during the period of dle-class family, and her father people’s revolt against the Hun- worked as a foreman at the estate garian ban Khuen Héderváry, Za- of count Ivan Erdödy.1 Her family gorka single-handedly edited Ob- soon moved to Baron Geza Rauch’s zor for five months while her male estate, where she began her edu- colleagues were in jail, and even cation. Later, she went to school spent ten days in jail herself. She in Varaždin and Zagreb. While in also organized a women’s protest Zagreb, she started a school pa- against ban Khuen. per, wrote stories and a school Slavica Jakobović-Fribec inter- play. When she was 17, her par- prets Zagorka’s intense pride in ents forced her to marry an older ending up behind bars as a “fem- Hungarian railway clerk. Five years inist demand for equal political later she escaped the oppressive acknowledgement, even in crim- 1 Zagorka’s biography can be com- inal prosecution” (2008, 22). Za- piled from many different sources, but the gorka’s time in jail was seen as a most recent and up-to-date information is “scandalous slipping out of gender available at http://zagorka.net/biografija/, roles” (Jakobović-Fribec 2008, 23). the official website of Marija Jurić Zagorka’s Memorial Apartment in Zagreb, which also She gained international fame as houses Croatia’s Centre for Women’s Studies. a foreign correspondent reporting If not otherwise indicated, the data on Zag- from the Croatian-Hungarian Par- orka’s life are taken from this valuable source. Defiant Trajectories 15 liament in Budapest in 1906. A year tion of active heroines, who partic- later, her articles were published ipate not only in the romance plot in a book called Razvrgnute zaruke but in significant historical events [Broken Engagements]. In 1909, as well. The public activity of her she also reported from Vienna on heroines transforms the popular the so-called Friedjung Process. love story into a feminist narrative – largely utopian, of course – about Even though she had already the active role of women in Croa- written two social novels and many tian history (Grdešić 2008, 372). plays, mostly satirical or historical, she started writing popular fiction Zagorka’s novels also represent in 1910. This is the year she pub- a formal departure from other lished the first Croatian crime nov- popular fiction published in Croa- el, Kneginja iz Petrinjske ulice [The tia at the same time. Stanko Lasić, Countess of Petrinjska Street]. Her in his 1986 monograph on Zag- first popular historical romance, orka, was the first to point out that Tajna Krvavog mosta [Secret of the Zagorka abandoned the tradition- Bloody Bridge], was published in al, realist nineteenth-century mod- 1911 and would later become part el of historical fiction, and replaced of her most famous novel in seven it with what he calls the “freedom volumes, Grička vještica [The Witch principle”, which manifests itself of Grič]. Zagorka was also the au- in the radical infinity of the narra- thor of the first Croatian science tive structure of her popular nov- fiction novel,Crveni ocean [The Red els (1986, 93). A case in point is Ocean], published in 1918. her novel Gordana, comprising 12 volumes and almost 9,000 pages. It As a journalist and author of is the longest novel written in the fiction, Zagorka consistently cham- Croatian language and one of the pioned Croatian political indepen- longest in the world. dence, fought against German and Hungarian imperialism, advocated Zagorka also continued pursu- women’s and workers’ rights and ing a journalistic career. She was promoted social justice (Nemec the founder and editor of two of 1998, 77). Her popular historical fic- Croatia’s earliest women’s maga- tion was, as Ivo Hergešić described zines, Ženski list [Woman’s Paper, it, “a great school of activism” 1925-1938] and Hrvatica [Croatian (quoted in Nemec 1998, 66), but Woman, 1938-1941]. Finally, she unlike the majority of popular nov- published her significant overt- els in the first half of the twentieth ly feminist novel Kamen na cesti century, Zagorka’s romances were [A Stone in the Road, 1932-1934], not moralistic and pious, but were about a woman trying to live and politically subversive. This is ac- work independently in the patri- complished through the construc- archal society, as well as several 16 autobiographical essays catalogu- to the countryside, to Slavonski ing the many prejudices and in- Brod, with her husband and they justices she was forced to endure had six children in ten years, two of as a woman in the public realm. whom died (19). Fifteen years later, Marija Jurić Zagorka died in 1957. she gave birth to another daughter According to Nemec, she remains (25). She struggled with postpar- the most popular Croatian writer tum depression and depression (1998, 74). for most of her life, and in the end committed suicide at the age of 64 At first glance, it seems Ivana (Zima 2019, 375). Brlić-Mažuranić’s life story could not be more different than Zag- She took up writing again after orka’s.2 Her upper middle-class her children were born. Her most family was one of the most respect- famous works are the children’s ed in Croatia. Her grandfather was novel Čudnovate zgode šegrta Ivan Mažuranić, Croatia’s first “ban Hlapića [The Marvelous Adventures commoner”, her father Vladimir of Hlapić the Apprentice] and Priče was a lawyer and politician, and iz davnina [Croatian Tales of Long her grandmother Aleksandra was Ago] a collection of original fairy the sister of the poet Dimitrija De- tales inspired by Slavic mythology meter (Zima 2001, 13-15). She was and informed by a Christian worl- born in 1874 in Ogulin, but her dview, which was first published in family moved to Zagreb in 1882. 1916 and translated into English as She mostly had private tutors and early as 1924 (Zima 2001, 22–25). started writing poetry in Croatian The Tales were translated into ten and French very early, as well as languages in the 1920s and 1930s keeping a diary (15-17). and earned their author the nick- name of “the Croatian Hans Chris- Respecting her family’s wishes, tian Andersen” (25–27). she married Vatroslav Brlić, a law- yer from another renowned Croa- During the 1930s, she was nom- tian intellectual family, when she inated for the Nobel Prize in Liter- was 18 years old (17). She moved ature four times (Zima 2019, 349). She was also the first woman to 2 Dubravka Zima is the most prom- become a corresponding member inent Croatian expert on the life and work of Brlić-Mažuranić. Her books Ivana Brlić of the Yugoslav Academy of Scienc- Mažuranić and Praksa svijeta. Biografija Ivane es and Arts in 1937 (351–52). Brlić-Mažuranić [The Practice of the World. A Biography of Ivana Brlić-Mažuranić] should be The reactions of Zagorka’s and used as principal references in all discussions Brlić-Mažuranić’s contemporaries on Brlić-Mažuranić. The website of the muse- um in Ogulin dedicated to Ivana Brlić-Mažura- to their work, and consequently nić’s fairy tales, Ivana’s House of Fairy Tales, is their respective positions in Cro- also a valuable source of information: http:// atian literary history, could not baza.ivaninakucabajke.hr/hr/o-bajkama. Defiant Trajectories 17 have been more different. Dur- Dunja Detoni Dujmić describes ing her lifetime, Zagorka endured Brlić-Mažuranić’s feminism as many hateful and violent attacks “mystical-utopian” and contrasts it from her male critics, who called with Zagorka’s brand of increasing- her writing “Schundliteratur [trash] ly politically committed feminism for peasant women” (Lasić 1986, (1998, 209). But even though their 101), and also from her political concepts of feminism and activism enemies, who labelled her a “dis- diverge, what connects these two gusting man-woman” because of superbly talented women writers her non-conforming appearance is the way their will to write was and attitude in terms of gender suppressed as inappropriate for a (76). Conversely, but originating woman: it was proclaimed unnat- from the same patriarchal ideal ural and monstrous in Zagorka’s of femininity, Brlić-Mažuranić was case (Jakobović-Fribec 2008, 24), described by Ulderiko Donadini and in Ivana’s case interpreted as as “a true Croatian aristocrat – a an extension of her maternal du- mother, an honourable lady”, and ties (Zima 2019, 249). It is for this her writing an expression of “such reason that Zagorka consistently heartfelt, feminine charm and el- claimed that she had made no sig- egance; a soul that one senses as nificant contribution to Croatian a silk handkerchief in the breeze” literature. Her feminine “anxiety of (quoted in Detoni Dujmić 1998, authorship”, as Gilbert and Gubar 39), precisely because she seemed termed this condition (2000, 7), to conform to the same gender ex- manifested itself in publicly down- pectations. According to Dubravka playing her literary accomplish- Zima, Brlić-Mažuranić seemed to ments. For instance, she writes in “accept, symbolically and explicit- one of her autobiographies: “I have ly, the class and representational told my audience from the stage expectations of 19th-century public that I am not and never will be a and private gender politics” (2019, writer, nor have I tried to be one. 8). Zagorka, on the other hand, My profession is journalism. I have is nowadays seen as the “petite written novels only as propagan- Amazon of Croatian feminism” da against German novels” (Jurić (Sklevicky, 1996). Brlić-Mažuranić’s Zagorka 1997, 487). class position, higher social stand- ing, acceptance of the role of wife On the other hand, as Dubrav- and mother, but also the projec- ka Zima explains, Ivana’s upbring- tion of her maternal duties onto ing instilled in her an “essentialist her writing, all help explain her understanding of a woman’s social stronger and more stable place and personal duty”, which led her (compared to Zagorka) in the Croa- to “neglect and subvert the need tian literary canon. to write” (2019, 249). Zima regards Ivana’s firm belief in “women’s du- 18 ties” and her strong Christian mo- social role and her own creative rality epitomized in humility and impulses, always thinking of her modesty as two key reasons for maternal duty, strongly believing suppressing her own will to write it “brings peace to the soul” (Zima (250). In her 1916 autobiography, 2019, 373), while at the same time simply called Autobiografija, Brlić- realizing that it “was impossible to Mažuranić writes: attain or hold onto this peace be- lieving in the same ideas she had My great wish that anything I acquainted herself with in the by- wrote would sometime be pub- gone 1880s” (375). lished was repressed from a young age by another strong * feeling: early in life my reason- ing led me to the conclusion Contemporary academic re- that writing did not agree with search reveals that the life and the duties of a woman. Until fif- work of both Marija Jurić Zagorka teen years ago, this struggle be- and Ivana Brlić-Mažuranić is a great tween a strong desire to write deal more complex and contra- and this (right or wrong) feeling dictory than dated stereotypes of of duty had completely con- femininity suggest. In recent years, tained my public literary work. many academic papers and a num- (Brlić-Mažuranić 1997, 524) ber of books and edited volumes have been published on both writ- According to Zima, “Ivana de- ers, and both authors now have cided to publish her work only museums dedicated to preserving after she recognized it as part of their legacy: the museum dedicat- her duties as a mother, i.e. when ed to Zagorka is located in her Za- she wanted to provide her chil- greb apartment, and also houses dren with suitable literature” (Zima the Croatian Centre for Women’s 2013). However, it is interesting to Studies; Brlić-Mažuranić’s work note that in her autobiography she is celebrated in Ivana’s House of states that her favourite work up Fairy Tales in Ogulin. until 1916 was Slike [Images], a col- lection of poems for adults. Zima This new research has cer- interprets this as a “departure from tainly led to Zagorka’s and Brlić- […] principle” and an “admission Mažuranić’s more central position that her desire to write overpowers in the Croatian literary canon; the guilt caused by her dismissal of however, these changes have also ‘women’s duties’” (2013). It seems raised more general questions that Brlić-Mažuranić found herself about the place of women writers in a contradictory position typical in the canon. In writing her (al- for women artists in the modern ready mentioned) book on Croa- era, torn between her feminine tian women authors, Dunja Detoni Defiant Trajectories 19

Dujmić aims to establish their con- by women writers “cross national tribution to Croatian literature as a as well as temporal boundaries” whole and does not mean to sepa- (xxi). Finally, the question wheth- rate and segregate their work. But er the canon can be expanded to it still remains to be seen whether accommodate popular literature this list of women authors will cre- and children’s literature, which ate a distinct “feminine canon”, or often do not follow the aesthet- whether it will simply be added to ic tendencies of “high” literature the existing masculine canon as a at all, brings us to a standstill. As kind of “appendix”, as Lada Čale Kristina Grgić states, simply add- Feldman described it (1999, 151), ing Zagorka’s name to the mod- or whether it will actually be inte- ernist literary canon would not grated into the history of Croatian significantly change her marginal literature. position in Croatian literary history (2009, 32). On the other hand, pre- The crucial question now cisely because of their marginality, seems to be: is it even possible to her texts have the potential to en- integrate women writers into the courage a critical rethinking of pre- Croatian literary canon without vailing ideas of modernism and the reforming it or doing away with it canon (32). altogether? And if the value system underlying the canon is annulled, Although the canon can still be is the concept of the canon still a useful and practical tool, it is nec- sustainable? Every national liter- essary to challenge the aesthetic ature has authors, both male and and ideological values underlying female, who cannot be conven- its formation and transformation. iently included in a specific literary Rita Felski does precisely this in period. Indeed, when it comes to her seminal book The Gender of Croatian literature, this seems to Modernity when she analyses the be the case with the majority of au- different myths of modernity. She thors since the nineteenth century. tries to see what would happen to Due to specific social, political, and our conventional understanding of aesthetic reasons, “newer” Croa- modernity if we looked at it from tian literature is continually out the perspective of women writers of step with European literature. and women readers, and if we The problem becomes even more focused on texts by women and complex when we attempt to bring about women. Now “those dimen- women authors into the fold be- sions of culture either ignored, cause, as Gilbert and Gubar have trivialized, or seen as regressive claimed, the chronology of wom- rather than authentically modern en authors “is not always quite – feelings, romantic novels, shop- the same as men’s” (2000, xxix), ping, motherhood, fashion – gain and the similarities between texts dramatically in importance”, she 20 claims (1995, 22). Felski maintains that the “equation of masculinity with modernity and femininity with tradition is only one of various pos- sible stories about the nature and meaning of the modern era” (2).

In the same way, a different story about the gender of Croa- tian modernity can be told if we choose to highlight popular and children’s authors like Marija Jurić Zagorka and Ivana Brlić-Mažuranić. We might even come to realize that Croatian modern literature is dom- inantly popular and feminine. Works cited

Brlić-Mažuranić, Ivana. “Autobi- Jakobović-Fribec, Slavica. “Zagorka ografija.” Autobiografija hrvatskih pi- – subjekta otpora: svjedokinja, akteri- saca, edited by Vinko Brešić, Zagreb, ca, autorica – ili feminizam, ovlašćivan- AGM, 1997, pp. 521–31. je slobode i ravnopravnosti žene, politička strast 20. stoljeća.” Neznana Čale Feldman, Lada. “Lijepa i ljepša junakinja. Nova čitanja Zagorke, edited književnost.” Treća, časopis Centra za by Maša Grdešić and Slavica Jakobo- ženske studije, no. 2, 1999, pp. 150–52. vić-Fribec, Zagreb, Centar za ženske Detoni Dujmić, Dunja. Ljepša polovi- studije, 2008, pp. 13–42. ca književnosti. Zagreb, Matica hrvats- Jurić Zagorka, Marija. “Što je moja ka, 1998. krivnja?” Autobiografije hrvatskih pisaca, Dujić Lidija. “A gdje sam bila prije edited by Vinko Brešić, Zagreb, AGM, jučer ja? Kako su Marija Jurić Zagorka 1997, pp. 451–99. i Ivana Brlić-Mažuranić spojile spisatel- Kravar, Zoran. Svjetonazorski sepa- jstvo s dužnostima ženskim.” Malleus rei. Antimodernističke tendencije u hr- Maleficarum. Zagorka, feminizam, an- vatskoj književnosti ranoga 20. stoljeća. tifeminizam, edited by Maša Grdešić, Zagreb, Golden Marketing-Tehnička Zagreb, Centar za ženske studije, 2011, knjiga, 2005. pp. 93-104. Lasić, Stanko. Književni počeci Marije Felski, Rita. The Gender of Modernity. Jurić Zagorke. Zagreb, Znanje, 1986. Harvard UP, 1995. Nemec, Krešimir. Povijest hrvatskog Gilbert, Sandra M., and Susan Gu- romana od 1900. do 1945. godine. Za- bar. The Madwoman in the Attic. The greb, Znanje, 1998. Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Cen- tury Literary Imagination. 2nd ed., Yale Sklevicky, Lidija. “Patuljasta ama- UP, 2000. zonka hrvatskog feminizma: Marija Jurić Zagorka.” Konji, žene, ratovi, Za- Grdešić, Maša. “‘Divno čudovište’”: greb, Ženska infoteka, 1996, pp. 245– uvod u Zagorkinu koncepciju an- 47. droginije.” Neznana junakinja. Nova či- tanja Zagorke, edited by Maša Grdešić Zima, Dubravka. Ivana Brlić Mažura- and Slavica Jakobović Fribec, Zagreb, nić. Zagreb, Zavod za znanost o književ- Centar za ženske studije, 2008, pp. nosti Filozofskoga fakulteta u Sveučiliš- 357–88. ta Zagrebu, 2001. Grgić, Kristina. “Marija Jurić Zag- ---. Praksa svijeta. Biografija Ivane orka i kanon modernizma.” Mala rev- Brlić-Mažuranić. Zagreb, Ljevak, 2019. olucionarka. Zagorka, feminizam i pop- ---. “Slike.” Baza bajki, 2013, http:// ularna kultura, edited by Maša Grdešić, baza.ivaninakucabajke.hr/hr/o-bajka- Zagreb, Centar za ženske studije, 2009, ma/ivana-brlic-mazuranic-knjizevnost/ pp. 17–36. slike Accessed 30 June 2020. Photo credits Wikimedia Commons / Public Domain. Ksenija Rakočević

Divna Veković – Our Heroine

Divna Veković Defiant Trajectories 23

Montenegrin culture origi- Montenegrin culture clearly nated on tribal grounds, and it is recognizes models of behaviour known that the tribe has powerful that are acceptable and desirable, defence mechanisms by which it and, as the main rule of survival overcomes, subjugates or elim- in a rugged and poor, largely in- inates disobedient individuals. fertile land, constantly exposed to Thus, the traditional arrangement the dangers of powerful external of Montenegrin culture maintains forces, the principle of the animal its existence in the firm grip of kingdom is imposed – in the form tribal culture, whose strict rules of the stronger one’s oppression, everyone must obey. That is to say, which recognizes the physical as tribal culture functions as a solid the only authoritative force. Given and resistant network into which that Montenegrin history is full of the memory of collective and so- frequent wars in which mostly men cial values is deposited, forming served, misogyny has become (and a stable axiological system with remains) one of the most promi- a cult at its centre (in the case of nent elements of Montenegrin so- Montenegrin culture, it is a cult of ciety. Until two decades ago, Mon- honour and valour), according to tenegrin reality was permeated by and against whose rigorous pa- constant wars, struggles, and oth- rameters the behaviour of an in- er forms of militant activity which, dividual is measured. The relation- by the logic of things (and physical ship between man and the spatial strength), involved greater partici- appearance of the world is no less pation of men and served as fertile complicated. On the one hand, ground on which to impose the that appearance is created by a “pater familias” model. (Gezeman man, and on the other, it actively 2003, 17) forms a man who is immersed in it (Gezeman 2003, 17). 24

Freedom, to which everything ing conditions contributed to Mon- is subordinated, is striven for in tenegro’s lack of progress. What all ways. This implies that culture develops inside this framework, in was instrumentalized and often accordance with the oral tradition, abused, among other things, with is discursive rather than situational the aim of elevating the Montene- power, so notions of heroism and grin man to the pedestal. The war- the constant need to fight for and rior tradition is deeply woven into maintain a sense of freedom are Montenegrin national existence passed from generation to gener- and inhumane living conditions ation and woven deeply into Mon- have contributed to discriminating tenegrin national life. Under such against and marginalizing women conditions, the idea of human on the basis of physical strength. rights develops more slowly than In such tribal systems, invariant in more economically developed units such as ancestral cults and communities. glorious pasts, a stable axiology and tribal-patriarchal patterns of Women in Montenegro enjoyed behaviour influence the organiza- their most favourable position tional principles of the life of com- following the Second World War, munity members. thanks to the activities of the AFŽ (the Women’s Antifascist Front), Among the former republics of after which Montenegrin women Yugoslavia, the position of women along with women in other parts in Montenegro was the most en- of Yugoslavia gained the right to dangered. The creation and sur- vote.1 In addition, the Party took vival of every nation is based on care of women in a way that al- a vicious and dangerous base of lowed them to work and have fam- myths. One of the central myths ilies, while their children stayed in Montenegrin culture is based on is state-funded kindergartens. For the myth of man as a superior be- the first time in history, women ing, which is closely related to the would be paid the same as men, dominant Christian (monotheistic and in addition, obligatory celiba- and monocentric) tradition, and cy, which was previously associat- one built on the postulate of the holy (male) trinity: God the Father, 1 In the first Constitution of the Fed- Son, and Holy Spirit. (Blehova Čel- eral People’s Republic of Yugoslavia (FNRJ) af- ebić 2002, 129) ter the Second World War, dated 31 January 1946, Article 24 states: “Women are equal to Small and economically disor- men in all areas of state, economic and so- cio-political life.” Until 1946, women in Mon- ganized Montenegro, even within tenegro did not have the right to vote. The the former Yugoslavia, lagged in first elections for the National Assembly of terms of enlightenment and edu- Montenegro were held on 27 November (O. cation. Barren rock and difficult liv- S. 14 November) 1905, and women could not participate in the elections. Defiant Trajectories 25 ed with occupations such as teach- presented in his book Crnogorski ing, would be abolished. čovjek [Montenegrin Man] which records various harsh customs In Montenegro, between the such as the fact that all jobs that two world wars, and especially af- involved bending spine were done ter the Second World War, some- by women, because it was con- thing happened in terms of the sidered humiliating for a man to position of women that was char- bend, or for a man to cry when a acteristic of a large number of Eu- woman died (Seferović 2014, 47). ropean countries. In other words, what happened was the particular The Institutionalization irony that the biggest wars – which of Women’s Education in decimated the secular popula- Montenegro tion, employed new battle tech- nologies and the use of hitherto Bearing in mind that in Mon- unseen weapons – brought both tenegro there was more war than considerable rights and relief to peace, and that the tribal order the position of women in society. and popular widespread traditions Up until then, women had been modelled the axiological system, tied exclusively to the space of the it is hardly surprising that there home and/or the estate; but when was a marked lag in terms of ed- there were no longer enough men ucation, especially when it came to serve the war effort, women to women. The beginning of edu- were transferred from such spaces cation and schooling of women in to the battlefield. By proving that Montenegro is closely connected they were capable of carrying rifles with the name of Jelena Vicković, and fighting, after the Second War who gathered and educated girls they finally got what they had been in Cetinje in a non-institutional denied for centuries. but organized form. The first pri- vate school for female children The position of women in old opened in Cetinje in 1872, while Montenegro is well illustrated by two more were soon opened in the fact that public beatings were Podgorica (1888) and Bar (1901). prohibited only by the Code of King By the same token, however, all Nikola (1860-1918) and up until this time the education of female then women had not been allowed children was neither obligatory nor to sit at the same table with men; legally prescribed, but depended and even if the men concerned solely on the will of their parents. were boys, they even had the ad- Particularly important for the ed- vantage of being the first to cross ucation of women in Montenegro the street. The difficult position of was the founding of the Girls’ In- women is well documented in the stitute in Cetinje, in 1869, under writings of Gerhard Gesemann as the auspices of Russian Empress 26

Maria. The launch of the Institute, the Institute operated together which provided free education with the Theological Seminary, to talented female children from which was attended by boys, and Montenegro and elsewhere, tes- which was located in Billiards; later tified to King Nikola’s progressive a new building was built specifical- ideas and his desire and aspiration ly for the needs of this educational to improve the position of women. institution. (During his reign, many previous- ly permitted discriminatory acts, The compulsory subjects stud- such as the public beating of wom- ied were Serbian, French, Russian, en and the rule that a man always mathematics, geography, history, had the right to cross the street women’s handicrafts, housekeep- first were abolished). During his ing, drawing, singing, gymnastics, stay in Russia, King Nikola (Njeguši psychology, logic, and the science 1841-Antibes 1921) had the op- of education. It is important to portunity to meet educated wom- mention that the Institute empha- en and he had the idea that there sized the preparation of girls for should be a place in Montenegro family life and care for family val- where women could get education ues, while in the background was and nurture the ideological values the possibility of continuing educa- on which the organization of Mon- tion and participating in the com- tenegrin society rested.2 munity to which they belonged. Those who came from wealthier The Girls’ Institute in Cetinje families often opted to go into was the first women’s high school teaching. However, most of the in Montenegro. The enrolment students finished their education documents reveal a plan to admit upon leaving the Institute. 24 students, but the first genera- tion of women students saw only Although conceived as an insti- 12 admitted, which testifies to the tution that would contribute to the parents’ lack of interest in educat- education of local girls, most of the ing female children, but also to girls enrolled at the Institute were the strongly rooted patriarchy in foreigners, and of the 450 students place. The youngest of the 12 stu- who passed through the Institute dents was just 9 years old; how- only 205 were from Montenegro. ever, none of those enrolled were Different views of the Institute’s literate and the Institute, although activities surfaced in 1904 when conceived as a secondary school, the Government of Montenegro operated as an institution for pri- sent a request to the Russian court mary education. At the beginning, to reform the curriculum with the hope that it would pay more atten- 2 See: https://www.muzejzena.me/ tion to issues important to Mon- kalendar.45.kalendar.html Defiant Trajectories 27 tenegro in the schooling of young under Ottoman rule. However, it girls; but the request was not met should be noted that women were favourably on the part of the Rus- being educated in the area of to- sian court, and the Institute was day’s Kotor centuries ago, that is, shut down. in Kotor there was a private edu- cational institution for women (in A Culturally Divided the form of a monastery) as early Montenegro as 1500, and in 1550 the city had a free educational institution for If we look at the history of women. It is also interesting that, Montenegro through the lens of during that time, at these monas- today’s borders, the difference teries, attention was paid to liter- and imbalance between the south ature, and women enjoyed a high (specifically the area of Boka) and level of financial independence the north is particularly apparent. (the dowry they would receive at Such a situation is not at all sur- marriage belonged exclusively to prising, bearing in mind that in dif- them, and only they could decide ferent parts of today’s Montenegro on and dispose of it, while in the different invaders operated and event of a divorce the dowry was exerted their influence, ultimately indivisible).3 having a lasting impact on the cul- ture and way of life assumed by In a way, the fact that this city the local population. This situation venerates the cult of the Mother of also affects the position of women, God far more than it honours the which is reflected in her position in cult of Jesus speaks of the privi- society, in family relations, and in leged position of women in medi- the possibilities of gaining educa- eval Kotor. A similarly high status tion and achieving a certain degree of veneration is given to Blessed of independence. Osanna, the patroness of the city The centuries-old colonial or of Kotor, about whom plenty of semi-colonial framework in which material exists in the Archives of different parts of today’s Monte- Kotor, as well as in the Library of negro found themselves led to the Maritime Museum and the Mu- an emphasis on two dominant seum of the City of Perast, which influences: the Austro-Hungari- 3 Records on the existence of wom- an in Boka, and the Turkish in the en’s education in the Bay of Kotor (part of north of Montenegro. Therefore, it Montenegro) since the 16th century can be should be mentioned that the area found in the Church of St. Nicholas, among of today’s Kotor, i.e. Boka, was far which are the records of Don Niko Luković, who described in detail the life of Blessed more progressive compared to the Osanna and the origin of Prčanj. In addition, rest of the country. It is important Don Luković writes about the institutional ed- to point out that Boka did not fall ucation of women in Kotor during the 16th century. 28 testifies to the reputation that this, certainly embodied in the work of originally rural, person enjoyed Divna Veković from the Girls’ Insti- among the people of Kotor. tute in Cetinje. Some 450 students graduated from the Girls’ Institute, The fact that the women of but the number of girls who came Kotor took part in the defence of from today’s north of Montenegro the City against the Ottoman fleet was negligible. The most notable in the 16th century, during which among them, and certainly one of they, as Don Niko Luković notes, the institute’s most important stu- took up arms, also speaks of the dents in general, is Divna Veković, more active participation of wom- the first woman Doctor of Philos- en in issues of general importance. ophy from Montenegro, who, un- In addition, women were involved fortunately, has been researched in finance, and it was not -unusu or written about very little. The al for them to study and serve as decades-long silence on the signif- pharmacists. (Luković 1965, 113) icance of this woman from Berane for Montenegrin history, which is Such an encouraging situation already sadly lacking as regards in the area of today’s Montenegro women, represents an additional is valid only for the area of Boka, problem. Few university profes- and more specifically Kotor, even sors or historians in Montenegro when it comes to much more re- have written about Divna Veković; cent, that is, more modern periods. and historical subjects on the pe- As has already been mentioned, riod, taught in the History Study the institutionalized education of Program at the University of Mon- women only relates to the end of tenegro, make no mention of her. the 19th century, and documenta- ry material on earlier periods re- In accordance with the domi- lated to the north and the rest of nant, warrior-centred view of Mon- Montenegro is almost negligible. tenegrin history, with wars and Women in this area are predomi- battles being taught in primary and nantly attached to the family home secondary schools, Divna Veković and the difficult, even dangerous, is not given any space in history position of Montenegrin women is teaching (except in the 20% of the well documented by Gerhard Ge- curriculum in which teachers are semann in his Montenegrin Man, free to choose what is included in where he records some of the agreement with the local commu- Montenegrin patriarchal-misog- nity and student-related bodies). ynistic customs bordering on the bizarre. (Gezeman 2003, 171) There is not a single document related to Divna Veković in the However, the bright spot in most important libraries in Mon- Montenegrin women’s history is tenegro, except in the National Li- Defiant Trajectories 29 brary Đurađ Crnojević and in the Divna Veković is the first Doc- library of the Eparchy of Budiml- tor of Philosophy from Monte- ja-Nikšić (which includes the area negro, the first dentist, and the of Berane near which Veković was first translator of Petar II Petrović born). We also consider the num- Njegoš’s Gorski vijenac [The Moun- ber of references to Divna Veković tain Wreath, 1847]. Veković com- that we managed to find in library pleted the translation of Njegoš’s databases to be worryingly small, text in 1915 in Paris, and two years so few as could be counted on one later the translation was pub- hand. lished. The foreword to the French edition of The Mountain Wreath was Divna Veković was born in 1886 written by the French author Henri in Berane, in the village of Lužac, de Régnier, who had nothing but the youngest of seven children. praise for the translation, stating She finished primary school in her that it was one of the most popular hometown, at the Đurđevi Stupovi texts in Serbian literature. Howev- monastery, after which she went to er, the translation of Divna Vekov- Skopje for further education. As she ić did not receive similar praise produced enviable results during among domestic critics, with Luka her schooling, she became a schol- Dotlić and Nikola Banašević play- arship holder of the Girls’ Institute ing roles in the criticism of Vekov- in Cetinje, where she also excelled ić’s translation. and became a holder of King Niko- la’s scholarship, which enabled her The topics Njegoš deals with to continue her education in Amiens in his work are far from unknown in France, after which she would to French readers, who are well go on to attend the Sorbonne. She familiar with heroic epic poems, graduated in 1917, from the two- but there are huge cultural differ- year Dental School in Paris. During ences between Montenegrin and the First World War, she was en- French folklore and ritual. Due to gaged in collecting aid for the Ser- the characteristic verse in which bian army, even though her place it is written, Veković opted for a of permanent residence was Paris. prose translation of the poem, for She came to Yugoslavia in 1939 to which she offered explanations in celebrate the 550th anniversary of the notes. the Battle of Kosovo. Shortly after her return to Yugoslavia, a new war Because The Mountain Wreath is broke out and Veković failed to re- full of localisms and dialect-related turn to France, which is why she details characteristic exclusively of spent the occupation in Berane, Montenegrin culture, and because working in the People’s Administra- the tribal organization and opin- tion of Montenegro as a part-time ions dictated the official hierarchi- official at the Health Centre. cal order in terms of axiological 30 characteristics (duke, serdar [field historical figures of Montenegro marshall], etc.), Divna Veković of- who had the misfortune of be- fered an explanation for all of this ing largely silenced, bearing in (Radanović 2012). Based on the mind that “history is written by adapted translation, it is obvious the winners”. During the wars, that Veković is well-acquainted Veković was engaged in civil mili- with French poetry from the Re- tary service and was dedicated to naissance through Romanticism humanitarian and medical work. and on to Symbolism. Bearing in However, her ideology tied her to mind that the central idea of The the monarchist system, and at the Mountain Wreath is the spread of end of World War II she became a libertarian thought, while the erot- refugee. Her death remains unex- ic and the aesthetic remain loom- plained, so a number of versions ing in the background, Veković’s of it continue to this day – that she feeling for this particular layer of died before the end of the Second the text and her success in empha- World War and also that she died sizing it are interesting. at Zidani Most in eastern Slovenia.

There are conflicting opinions After the monarchists were de- among Francophonists about the feated, those who sympathized translation by Veković. However, with or were close to them were the fact that this young woman slowly forgotten. As a result, Divna from Berane from a highly tradi- Veković was silenced for decades tional environment was the first to and she did not manage to gain translate a key work of the Monte- a different position even after the negrin canon is certainly of great change of the system. The fact that importance. no documents exist that would help us learn more beyond her In addition to the translation translations only serves to further of The Mountain Wreath, Divna Ve- complicate our work on Veković. ković also translated Zmaj Jova Jo- vanović’ poems, as well as the Life and Customs of the Serbian People and a collection of folk tales by Vuk Karadžić (1787-1864). Vekov- ić is also the author of two dictio- naries of the French language and a French grammar book. She de- fended her doctoral dissertation in literature in 1926 in Belgrade.

Conclusion

Divna Veković is one of those Works cited

Blehova Čelebić, Lenka, Žene srednjovjekovnog Kotora. Podgorica: CID, 2002. Luković, Don Niko, Blažena Ozana Kotorka (1565-1965). Kotor: Biskupijski Ordinarijat, 1965. Gezeman, Gerhard, Crnogorski čov- jek: prilog književnoj istoriji i karakter- ologiji patrijarhalnosti, CID, Podgorica, 2003. Seferović, Lazar, Tragom čudesnih žena u Boki, 3M Makarije, 2014. Radanović, Anita, “Divna Veković (1886-1944): prva ljekarka u Crnoj Gori”. MEDICAL ISSN God. 3, br. 34 (5. febru- ar 2012), str 76.

Photo credits

Wikimedia Commons / Public Domain. Monika Rudaś-Grodzka, Katarzyna Nadana-Sokolowska, Emilia Kolinko

Maria Konopnicka: In Search of Individual Emancipation

Maria Konopnicka Defiant Trajectories 33

Maria Konopnicka (1842–1910) an independent-minded individual is one of the most important Pol- struggling for independence and ish women writers of the 19th and influence in a patriarchal society 20th centuries, having lived at a deeply divided between radical time when the feminist political and conservative factions, both of movement in Central and Eastern which claimed ownership of her Europe was just beginning to take person and writing, and keen to shape and was gathering momen- have her act as a national sooth- tum. Konopnicka was involved in sayer and sage, both presenting campaigning for Polish liberation her work in their own image. This and the return of the Polish lan- was a most awkward position to guage to mainstream education be put in, for Konopnicka thus be- during the time of the Polish par- came a sort of hostage for both titions (after 123 years of absence ends of the political spectrum, from world maps, Poland returned as well as her own public image. to the world’s maps following the Thus, not only does she become end of World War I, eight years a victim of her own popularity as after Konopnicka’s death), and an individual, but the same also supported school strike actions in holds true of her remarkable yet 1905. She was active in campaign- still largely unknown works, which ing for women to be given equal did not fit with the image of her as rights, but was not radical in her a defender of her nation and a ve- pronouncements and methods of hement patriot.1 working. In spite of certain diamet- rically opposed views of various 1 See Lena Magnone, Maria Konop- factions within Polish politics of nicka: Lustra i symptomy, Gdańsk 2011. See the time, she tried to set her own also a review of Magnone’s book: Katarzyna course as an artist through life, Nadana, Marii Konopnickiej flirty z wolnością, refusing to surrender to external (about the book Maria Konopnicka. Lustra i symptomy, L. Magnone), “Teksty Drugie” 2011, pressures. Her life story is that of no. 4, pp. 105–110. 34

Maria Konopnicka was born of “impatience” in her, which trig- in Suwałki in 1842, in what is now gered a period of restless wander- north-east Poland, not far from ing that would last more than a the Lithuanian border. She was the decade. daughter of Jozef (a lawyer) and Scholastyka (nee Turska) Wasil- In Warsaw, Konopnicka was in- kowski, and when she was a few volved in civic initiatives and cam- years old her family moved to Ka- paigns, but was also writing for lisz in the centre of the Polish King- various Warsaw journals. During dom, which was at the time under the years 1884–1886, she edited Russian Imperial occupation. Her the progressive women’s magazine mother passed away in 1854, leav- Świt [Dawn], while also writing for ing Maria and her siblings solely in other Polish publications, worked their father’s care. Maria was first with civic organisations across the home schooled, and then attend- three partitioned parts of Poland, ed a convent school run by the Sis- and after a couple of years she ters of the Holy Sacrament in War- also took part in an international saw. At the age of 20, she married protest against the Germanisa- Jaroslaw Konopnicki and moved to tion of Polish children. At the very his estate in Bronowo, and then outset of her creative career, she Gusin (today’s Lodz Voivodeship of published in Vilnius a short drama Poland). In ten years of marriage, entitled Hypatia (in the volume Z she gave birth eight times. In 1876, przeszłości. Fragmenty dramatyczne encouraged by positive reviews of [From the Past. Dramatic Pieces, her debut poetry, she took the un- 1881]. In this work, Konopnicka conventional step of moving with pits the humanism of a female her children to Warsaw, which es- philosopher against the barbarism sentially amounted to marital sep- of Christianity and its followers. aration. She decided to become a Christians detest her for her in- professional writer, teaching as a dividuality and independence, as means of earning a living. well as the influence she contin- ues to have over the residents of She published her first volume Alexandria. This work resulted in of poetry in 1881. Her poetic out- a violent attack upon Konopnicka put, featuring themes of both patri- by the Polish clergy, forcing her otism and lyricism, styled as poetry to discredit the opinions present- of the people though not lacking in ed in her work. It seems Hypatia, irony and sarcasm (Ławski 2010, as presented in this piece, along 137), gained widespread populari- with the courage with which she ty. Konopnicka lived in Warsaw un- pronounces her convictions, may til 1890, and then travelled to the be key in helping us understand West, a journey which – speaking the writer’s biography. Throughout metaphorically – aroused a sense her life, Konopnicka would share Defiant Trajectories 35

Hypatia’s view of the world – her ly “forgotten” by her mother; the protagonist liberates her slaves in second, Laura Pytlinska, tried to order to save them from death just extricate herself from a failed mar- as Konopnicka herself always tried riage to become an actress, the to defend the disadvantaged and greatest hurdle proving to be her those harmed by unjust laws and mother, who did not value her tal- imperfect institutions.2 ents and feared for her daughter’s morals and reputation. During her Warsaw period, Konopnicka fought this solitary Departure campaign by creating the perso- na of a woman writer engaged in In 1890, Konopnicka left War- social causes. Meanwhile she ex- saw and spent most of the ensu- perienced familial dramas in her ing years abroad in the company personal life, directly and negative- of her younger friend, painter and ly affecting the lives of Konopnic- emancipation campaigner Ma- ka’s daughters, who became their ria Dulębianka. For ten years, she mother’s victims, representing – as travelled around Europe, living in “Lacanesque symptoms”, a term France, Switzerland, Germany, and coined by Lena Magnone who was Italy, while also visiting resorts by an expert researcher on her writ- the Adriatic, including several visits ings – these aspects of Konopnic- to Opatija on the Istrian Peninsu- ka’s personality that she herself la. During this period, Konopnicka had to either sacrifice or preserve. wrote novels, journal articles, and One can see these struggles be- lyrical verses that were records of tween the mother and the daugh- her experiences as an outsider: ters as a clash of two generations: foreigner, woman, poet. This twen- positivistic and modernistic (Mag- ty-year period of movement can none 2011). One of Konopnicka’s therefore be seen as a time of per- daughters, Helena (the eldest), as sonal freedom – also possibly in- “hysterical”, a “woman of dubious cluding a close union with another th moral conduct” and a kleptomani- woman (the popular 19 -century ac to boot, was soon enough con- model of romantic friendship be- fined to a secure hospital for the tween women could involve lesbi- psychologically unwell, where she an love, as well as deep friendship spent the rest of her life, complete- and cohabitation as an alternative to patriarchal marriage) (Fader- man 1991). This freedom allowed 2 Her funeral in 1910 in Lviv was Konopnicka to fully spread her used as an excuse to stage a great, patriotic demonstration, but it took place without the creative wings, leading to the writ- official presence of the (very influential at the ing of her most remarkable works, time) clergy, who took this opportunity to ex- such as the novels in the series Na press their opposition to Konopnicka’s ideo- normandzkim brzegu [On Norman- logical stance. 36 dy Shores, Kraków 1904]3 and Italia lectual, a writer, and an artist try- [Italy, Warszawa 1901]. During this ing to turn temporary spaces into time, she was able to become inde- homes. Grand tour, which has on pendent in a way no other woman its map places of memory, histor- writer of the time had the courage ical spots, works of art, museums, to do, even though it was she who are in Konopnicka’s case only ap- stayed as far away as she could pearances, something evidenced from making any openly feminist by her Italian sonnets. This typi- declarations. cally West European experience of journeying as a starting point con- In the space of almost two dec- nected with the learning of histo- ades, Konopnicka settled – for ries, with memories of key figures longer or shorter periods of time and events, represents for her an – in various towns. The postcards excuse to go beyond the commu- she sent with messages to her fam- nity of this shared knowledge and ily trace a tangible, iconographic to write up her own, artistic and route of her journeys, at present existential, experiences. Delicately stored in the University Library in speaking, this direction of think- 4 Warsaw. On one level, they repre- ing – from a cultural community to sent an itinerary of formative jour- individuality, immersed in nature – th ney-making going on since the 18 Konopnicka captured in the sonnet century – the so-called grand tours. U grobu Pergolesa [At Pergolesi’s Zurich, Milan, Naples, Rome, Capri, Grave] as an example of the vers- Genoa, Merano, Florence, Dres- es from the volume of poetry Italia den, Lviv, Graz, Bielsk – these are (1901). just some of the places Konopnic- ka visited. Postcards represent a Konopnicka makes reference to record of a woman’s state of being, the famous song of Stabat Mater by especially so for one constantly on the 18th-century composer Giovan- the move – a cosmopolitan intel- ni Battista Pergolesi, whose grave- stone is located in Pozzuoli Cathe- 3 For the first time Konopnicka left dral, a port town on the Tyrrhenian the country in 1882. She set off on her trav- els accompanied by Aniela Tripplin, a novelist, Sea. Natural rhythms, with waves crossing Tyrolean villages, home to local high- flowing, cut into the lyrics of the landers, then on to northern Italy and finally “song of songs” sung by a weeping reaching Venice at a time when the city was mother. The song of the sea de- battling terrible flooding. This afforded her the opportunity of seeing the sea for the first molishes the cultural topos made time in her life. permanent, certain, unchangeable 4 The letters were reprinted in: Ma- and aestheticised in music and lit- ria Konopnicka, Listy do synów i córek, ed. Lena erature, in the whiteness of marble Magnone, Warszawa 2010. such as The Pietà by Michelangelo. In the sonnet, we hear the words: “Oh, me, earth, mother labouring Defiant Trajectories 37

— Morze gra... Pergolese, rzuć grobowe pleśnie! Oto ogromne, godne twych hymnów organy! Pójdź i z hukiem tej fali śpiewaj naprzemiany Twe nieśmiertelne „Stabat”, twoją pieśń nad pieśnie. „...O, ja ziemia, ja matka rodząca boleśnie! Oto na krzyżu czasów jest ukrzyżowany Syn mój, człowiek! Oto się krwawią jego rany!” — Morze gra... Słyszę głosy dalekie... jak we śnie. „...Oto od wschodniej zorzy po zachodnią zorzę Łez mię gorzkich i słonych opłynęło morze... Oto ślepego gniewu grzmi nade mną krater... Oto w bólach zrodziłam ból, co się zwie życie... O morze, o przepaści, o cichy błękicie, Słuchajcie wy mojego jęku!... Eia Mater...” (Konopnicka 1956, 307)

Maria Konopnicka

— The sea sings... Pergolesi in all your grave throngs, Here, your organs with all their mighty range! Go with a great roar, on this wave sing for change Your immortal Stabat, your song of songs. “... Oh, me, earth, mother labouring in pain! Here upon the cross of ages hangs crucified My son, a man! Wounds bleeding till he died!” — The sea sings... voices far off... in dreams remain. “... So auroras from the west to the east be My tears bitter and salty have birthed a sea... And the blind violence done to me no matter... Thus in pain I birthed pain that is called life... Oh sea, oh abyss, oh sky blue strife, You listen to my groans!... Eia Mater...”

Translated by Marek Kazmierski 38 in pain!”. In the final triplet, Kono- turn to their homeland. The truth pnicka abandons common sense is that Konopnicka was outside – existential, Christian, humanis- Poland’s borders of her own free tic, an order based on dying and will, and could return to it any giving birth, leaving alone the one time she chose. And yet the ques- who brings into the world life con- tion ought to be asked: what sort demned to decaying: “Thus in pain of homeland was she longing for? I birthed pain that is called life... Oh Reading her writing, especially on sea, oh abyss, oh sky blue strife, / the subject of the Polish peasant- You listen to my groans!... Eia Ma- ry, children and folklore, we must ter...”. The verb form of “stabat” begin to wonder where her home- tellingly vanishes, belonging as it land really was. Was it childhood? does to the observer’s narration, Or else some place in a folk song, who in repeating “became” hon- featuring a golden age of some ours the tragic presence of a moth- sort? The Romantics, in consider- er who looks upon her dying son. ing folklore, its musical tonality, Again, tellingly, Konopnicka does as well as its textual aspects, saw not continue as in the Latin origi- in it traces of pre-Slavonic times nal: “Eia, Mater, fons amóris / me (Rudaś-Grodzka 2013), instigating sentíre vim dolóris fac, / ut tecum a search there for the real roots of lúgeam”.5 “Power of compassion”, the scattered Slavonic peoples. In which in the original is asked of the 1840s, Adam Mickiewicz in his a Christian, is asked of no one in Paris Lectures talked about items Konopnicka’s sonnet, since in the of heritage of Slavonic Czech, Rus- latter work Mother/Earth/Mary is sian and Serb origin, and used shown as sharing her pain with them to create the metaphysics of no human being, but only with the a Slavonic soul/Slav spirit. Is this sea, the abyss, and blue skies. the world Konopnicka longed for? There is no simple answer to this Waves far from the motherland question. It seems that a new ap- In her travel journals and po- proach to religion and mythology ems, Konopnicka often wrote as popularised by social anthro- about a sense of longing for her pology was closer to her creative needs. In this time, at the end of homeland, which is why she could th be called a copyist of Romantic the 19 century, following the pub- The Golden Bough era poets who, after 1830, found lication of by themselves in exile, unable to re- Frazer, comparative mythology be- gins to gain greater popularity, and a new understanding of folk cul- 5 “Love’s sweet fountain, Mother ture resulted in Slavonic countries tender / haste this hard heart, soft to render / make me sharer in Thy pain.” Stabat Mater, experiencing a renaissance of folk transl. Beatrice E. Bullman, https://www.sta- tales, Slav fables and legends, and batmater.info/english-translation/. Defiant Trajectories 39 an explosion in writing by women. She is ill with a longing that has no home – and represents a source of Konopnicka’s longing is not new, modernist sensibility and im- directed solely at an undefined agination. For in the end, instead motherland, a golden age or her of a Platonic vision of ideal beau- childhood. This state often takes ty and goodness, Yvette sinks into on a more defined shape for a mo- her own dark abyss. Konopnicka ment in order to instantly disperse makes a modern transcription of and then return to forms that are the learning of Plato about love less defined. We can find an exem- and madness as written by him plification of this in her novella The in his Phaedrus dialogue. Socrates Sea Departed, part of the series of says that the soul – looking at the short stories entitled On Norman- visible beauty of this world – can dy Shores. This novella is a mas- recall that which it saw before it terpiece that can be compared to entered a body. This type of an- Virginia Woolf’s novel To the Light- amnesis is a divine visitation, and house (1927) or Thomas Mann’s to ordinary human eyes it is mad- novella Death in Venice (1912). ness, insanity, sickness – seeing as All of these works are connected the one who “sees something rem- by both maritime settings and a iniscent of things there experienc- sense of longing for far-away plac- es a shock and loses their mind” es. Yvette, the protagonist of Kono- (Plato 1996, 85). pnicka’s novella, is a young woman who stands at the edge of the sea, Yvette is not faced with a bril- staring into it as if it were the thing liant world of ideals. She does not she loves, beautiful and good in see goodness or justice, and re- her imagination, aspects that only mains on the shore with a sense of she can see in foggy shapes and a different, distant world, one she wavering sounds. She waits nei- has no access to, which only serves ther for her husband nor for her to intensify her melancholy and lover. Nothing can ease her sad- alienation. Lily Briscoe, a paint- ness, which remains undefined. er and visionary who spent many She sings a song of longing, one years trying to show on canvas the that is an answer to the siren song history of her love and longing for of the seas, seducing with ghostly Mrs Ramsay and her family, is filled shapes, a play of light, shade and with longing for that which is ideal, colour. She does not know what and thus inaccessible and distant. it is she longs for, what it is she She would like to become one with desires. Her gaze turns from re- Mrs Ramsay, but closeness is also ality and traces the receding sea impossible (Woolf 2005, 58), seeing waves, her soul leaving her body as Mrs Ramsay, absorbed in her and running after that which is in- own sadness, dreams of and longs accessible, infinite and cavernous. for that which lies boundless inside 40 her, submerged in darkness (Woolf ploitation and poverty of the rural 2005, 71). Lily, just as Gustav von and urban proletariat. Her best Aschenbach, believes that beauty known novellas (especially when is a path leading to the spirit via it comes to school children) are the senses. But this develops as Dym [The Smoke], Mendel Gdański a result of Eros’s love, which rep- and Nasza szkapa [Our Old Mare] resents a lack, a longing, a desire from the collection entitled Na for that which is ideal. Mann in his drodze [On the Road, Kraków Death in Venice dispels illusions re- 1893]. The formal complexity of lating to purity and sanctity in the certain works by Konopnicka has arts.6 He reveals the dark side of only recently begun to attract re- the madness of the senses, which newed interest. As an example, Plato decidedly rejected, believing the novella Nasza szkapa not only instead that sensory experiences takes children as protagonists but stripped of wild instincts represent there is also a child narrator who, the first step to achieving ideals. in spite of his age, is able to read Mann and Konopnicka know that both the literal and metaphorical this way leads to an abyss and the meaning behind the tragic events depths of ourselves, seeing as no that befall his family within just a one is capable of controlling the short space of time. The appar- workings of their subconscious – ently simple narrative of this work not in life, and all the less so in art. becomes, in the light of contem- The perfectly beautiful boy who is porary readings, quite extraordi- the object of Aschenbach’s love, nary (Szczuka 2016, 468–74). The and who is the embodiment of novella shows the ways in which Beauty itself, is also Hermes Psy- three working-class children sur- chopompos, leading him across a vive, or rather repress, the death sea to another shore. Distance is of their mother. The titular szkapa here an interweaving of love and (old mare) is an old horse much death, with the ultimate power to loved by the family, and which the free oneself from life. father is forced to sell in order to pay his wife’s medical bills, as she Konopnicka’s prose seems (su- is dying of tuberculosis. Before this perficially!) typical of the Positivist happens, however, the narrative epoch in Poland, though her later develops in such a way that the works are decidedly modernist line between the animal and the in character. Konopnicka initially dying woman begins to blur. Two used the novella format to pres- separate entities, one belonging to ent the pressing social problems nature, and the second to the ur- of the time – above all, the ex- ban animal organism (the novella’s 6 See: Thomas Mann, Śmierć w protagonists belong to a proletari- Wenecji / Death in Venice, transl. Leopold Staff, an community) begin to exchange Warszawa 1988. Defiant Trajectories 41 and interchange their individual an telling the story of another’s life, characteristics, without however an example of which is the series losing their particular uniqueness Za kratą [Behind bars, Warszawa in the process. In a way that is al- 1898]. Also worthy of note are the most imperceptible, the horse be- portraits of working-class women gins to take on the mother’s attrib- suffering from mental disorders utes – generosity, unconditional (Anusia, Na rynku [Anusia, On the love – as the woman’s condition Market Square]), which in some demands that more has to be done way echo Konopnicka’s difficult re- to save her life, which means pay- lations with her daughter Helena. ing the bills by selling household We find an attempt to tell a story of items, with their home becoming difficult relations and an unhappy, emptier by the day. The woman impossible love between mother “devours” her own home and fam- and daughter in the novella Panna ily, right up until her end. The old Florentyna [Miss Florentyna]. This mare, now the property of some- and other novellas by Konopnic- one else, as yet another “house- ka, the epic Pan Balcer w Brazylii hold item” that has been sold off, [Mr Balcer in Brazil] or the series returns on the day of the mother’s of Italian Madonnas in the volume funeral in order to pull the carriage Italia, evidence the woman-centric carrying her coffin to the cemetery. sensitivity in Konopnicka’s writing, The boys – in an exceptional ges- something she never expressed ture in defiance of death – dress in the form of feminist manifestos the old mare in fresh branches. or anything similar (see Magnone The horse’s slim body is reminis- 2011). cent of Ophelia, dressed in green leaves, yellow dandelions, poppies Orphanhood and larkspurs. It is an animal body After more than ten years of turned into an epitome of life – the travel, Konopnicka moved in 1903 children “turn it into their own rite into a manor house in Żarnowiec in of spring by the might of the same the Pogórze Karpackie region, giv- performative gesture which allows en to her by a “grateful nation” on them to suffer cold conditions and the 25th anniversary of the launch hunger in a merry fashion” (Szczu- of her literary career. In 1908, she ka 2016, 474). spoke at a women’s gathering in In formal terms, Konopnicka’s Lviv – in her speech, she noted that works also employ narratives fea- this was the first time she had ever turing the histories / herstories of spoken out for equal rights in pub- women and the relationships be- lic. The rhetoric employed in her tween them. This technique tends speech seems more complex than to take the form of conversation be- was called for at the event, which tween two women, or of one wom- was simple and political in context. 42

Another decade would have to pnicka’s writing were published pass before Polish women would in the Ljubljana-based periodical be given the right to vote. Mean- Dom in svet, Ljubljanski zwon (1902). while, Konopnicka saw the move- The likes of Ivan Prijatelj (1901) and ment for women’s emancipation Vojeslav Mole (1907, 1910) wrote as an opportunity for spiritual ad- about her work. The 50-year anni- vancement, treating women’s legal versary of the start of Konopnicka’s and civic repression as a motivat- literary career was also widely not- ing factor, her life élan, conditioned ed in the Balkans, where she was by the “collapse” and “decomposi- mentioned by Mole and Živanović tion” of the losing side (here she (1902 also marked the year Ivana was thinking of women), which Brlić-Mažuranić debuted in Zagreb, elevates people to more perfect making this a key year in literary forms of existence: “one rung high- history) (Fidowicz, 2017). Women er towards the light, towards free- writers from Zagreb also joined in dom, towards the truth.” (Marya this celebration, honouring Konop- 1908, 480) The struggle for equali- nicka with a special album featur- ty was in Konopnicka’s opinion one ing dedications from local women of the many battles to be waged writers; what happened to this gift – “the struggle is permanently on- remains unclear. going, and everything we are expe- riencing is a singularly defined mo- Towards the end of her life, ment” (Marya 1908, 480). Feminism Konopnicka tried to write a na- as a social movement, which was tional epic dedicated to migrant indeed a fight focused at a certain workers leaving Poland in search point in history on equal rights, of work, Pan Balcer w Brazylii [Mr was something she allowed to be- Balcer in Brazil, Warszawa 1910]. come an ongoing part of human The lyric quality of the work ties existence as such. the narrative together, which was a common quality defining Kono- Konopnicka was not only wide- pnicka’s poetry. The monotonous, ly renowned in Poland, but quick- syllabic rhythm found in her poems ly gained popularity among other was widely considered the quintes- Slavonic audiences. Her works sential quality behind much of her were published in Czech (177), verses. In this very lyricism we can Russian (95), Serbian and Croatian find the foundations of her writing, (47) journals.7 Articles on Kono- as well as of her life, something common to and true of the whole 7 Her translators included the Czech Pavla Maternová, the Russian Maria Trop- rii Konopnickiej za lata 1879–1979, in Maria ovska, the Bulgarian Dora Gabe, the Serbian Konopnicka – w siedemdziesięciopięciolecie zgo- Radovan Košutić (Belgrade), and the Croatian nu, ed. Józef Zbigniew Białek, Jerzy Jarowiecki, Adolfo Veber Tkalčević. See: Anna Faber-Cho- Wydawnictwo Naukowe Wyższej Szkoły Peda- jnacka, Barbara Góra, Przekłady utworów Ma- gogicznej, Kraków 1987, pp. 178–193. Defiant Trajectories 43 community of Slavonic writers – This fable features elements of the experience of orphanhood. ancient Slavonic beliefs preserved We should take a broader look at in folklore traditions and their vi- this category, for this is not just a sion of the world, where what matter of social standing revolving matters most is the bond between around the absence of family, but people (peasants) and the land, above all a fragment of personal represented here in a number of existence, of female experience, ways through the Mother figure. as well as the story of Slavonic na- The structure of the work is based tions in general. The act of being on a cleaving of its female charac- brought into the world, only to be ter. The titular orphan – compara- afterwards rejected by it, together ble with numerous predecessors with the feelings of incomplete- from tales by the Brothers Grimm ness and absence, is repressed and Hans Christian Andersen, as within our consciousness, but well as stories by Charles Dickens, these are the very aspects which, George Sand, Frances Burnett and through the figure of the orphan, Lucy Maud Montgomery – is a so- appear repeatedly in Konopnicka’s cially excluded child, an outsider poetry. who in specific ways is subject to exploitation and harm. After the Unlike the Romantics and their geese she is tending to are eaten inheritors, being orphaned did not by a fox, the child is chased out have particularly negative connota- of the family home. A dwarf she tions for Konopnicka. It was a state meets along the way advises the which forced one into action, a way girl to go see Queen Tatra with a towards freedom and a source of plea for help. The orphan and the strength, as evidenced by the liter- dwarf set off on a common journey. ary fairy tale she created in 1897, O In spite of her menacing aura, the krasnoludkach i sierotce Marysi [Of queen goddess takes pity on the Dwarves and Orphan Mary]. This child, bringing the geese back to life story, written for children, is almost and, having sent the child to sleep, entirely stripped of didactic tonality, transports her to the house of Pi- with its persuasive power found in otr Skrobek. It is worth noting that its distinctly lyrical qualities. Konop- the didactic aspect of the fairy tale nicka was convinced that children’s does not relate to the child, but to souls do not need discipline – they the world of adults: thanks to Mar- need melodiousness. In an 1892 ysia and the help provided by the letter to illustrator Piotr Stachiew- dwarves, Skrobek is transformed icz, she wrote these telling words: “I from his existence as a widower do not come here to teach children who has surrendered to apathy into or to entertain them. I come to sing a farmer willing to sacrifice himself with them […]” (Kuliczkowska 1981, for the sake of his land. Putting the 280). 44 required amount of energy into his ate the girl with Kora/Persephone: labours, he brings a fallow piece of “She is a character that balances the land back to life, ensuring his family dichotomy between life and death, have all they need – and the brood taking part in the transformation of now once again includes Marysia. ancient, sacrificial rituals into a ru- ral farming ritual, a character who In this story, Konopnicka cre- goes through a difficult process in- ates an orphaned female protag- volving suffering, searching and dis- onist who becomes emancipated, covery” (Misiak 2016, 539). in spite of the way Polish stories typically presented orphans up un- Faith in one’s own capabilities til that time (Misiak 2016, 535). The allowed the poet to break free of fairy tale features another clear- unwanted bonds, to overcome lim- ly defined female character: the itations, to go her own way. Konop- woman goddess, the one Marysia nicka abandoned her husband, her sets off to meet. This all-powerful children, Poland, and chose instead and fabulous Queen Tatra, present- to follow her own path. Her creative ed as a goddess-mountain, echoes freedom, her personal liberation the myth of the Earth Mother. The was her primary aim, and to the Dwarves, which are associated with end of her days she was true to it. Queen Earth, emerging from an- One might suspect that her attitude cient Slavonic lore, help our orphan and thinking were also close to oth- heroine find her way back into so- er Slavonic women writers at work ciety. The dominant symbol of the between the Baltic and the Adriatic girl’s rebirth, however, is Queen Seas. Tatra, her second mother, who fa- cilitates the child’s second birth, Translated by Marek Kazmierski allowing the child to reintegrate This article is funded by the into the world (Misiak 2016, 537). Polish Minister of Science and Just as in the novella Nasza szkapa, Higher Education, through the the characters representing nature “Programme for the Development take up the roles of characters from of Humanities” for 2018 – 2023, the world of culture – the girl’s inte- project number 11H 17 0143 85. gration thus takes on a dual direc- tion: her adopted mothers become nature and the Queen, her adopted father Skrobek the peasant. Mar- ysia’s orphanhood – linking it to the romantic creation of a philoso- pher orphan in the poetic writings by Teofil Lenartowicz – also serves to function in both a symbolic and metaphysical space. We can associ- Works cited

Faderman L. 1991, Surpassing the Rudaś-Grodzka M. Sfinks słowiański Love of Men Romantic Friendship and i mumia polska, Warszawa 2013. Love Between Women from the Renais- Szczuka K. 2016, Nasza szkapa, in: sance to the Present, London 1991. …czterdzieści i cztery. Figury literackie. Fidowicz A. 2017, Słowiańskie świ- Nowy kanon, ed. M. Rudaś-Grodzka et aty wyobraźni: Baśnie Marii Konopnick- al., Warszawa. iej i Ivany Brlić-Mažuranić, in: Wolność i Woolf V., Do latarni morskiej, transl. wyobraźnia w literaturze dziecięcej, ed. Kr. Klinger, Warszawa 2005. M. Kotowska, A. Czabanowska-Wróbel, Kraków. Konopnicka M. 1956, U grobu Per- Photo credits golesa, in: eadem, Wybór pism, Warsza- Wikimedia Commons / Public Do- wa 1956. main. Konopnicka M. 2010, Listy do synów i córek, ed. L. Magnone, Warszawa. Kuliczkowska, K. 1981, Literatura dla dzieci i młodzież w latach 1864–1918, Warszawa. Ławski J., “Trochę dzika...” Granice i przekroczenia Marii Konopnickiej, “An- thropos?” 2010, no. 14-15, pp. 131-162. Magnone L. 2011, Maria Konopnic- ka: Lustra i symptomy, Gdańsk. Marya Konopnicka w sprawie równ- ouprawnienia kobiet, „Bluszcz” 1908, no. 43, pp. 479-480. Misiak I. 2016, Sierotka Marysia, in: …czterdzieści i cztery. Figury literackie. Nowy kanon, ed. Monika Rudaś-Grodz- ka et al., Warszawa. Nadana K. 2011, Marii Konopnickiej flirty z wolnością, (about the book Maria Konopnicka. Lustra i symptomy L. Mag- none), “Teksty Drugie” 2011, no. 4, pp. 104-110. Plato, Phaidros, transl. E. Zwolski, Kraków 1996, p. 85. Ekaterina Artemyuk

The Life and Literary Work of Russian Women Writers of the Early 20th Century: Their Artistic Merit, Cultural Contribution, and Meaning for the Present

Anna Akhmatova Marina Tsvetaeva Zinaida Gippius Defiant Trajectories 47

The Russian part of the pro- transforming the present-day real- ject about Slavic women writers ity through the promotion of basic of the early 20th-century cultural concepts such as peace, love, life, route stitches together the physi- self-development, motherhood, cal locations connected with three empathy and compassion. prominent Russian poets: Anna th Akhmatova, Marina Tsvetaeva, Women writers of the early 20 and Zinaida Gippius. This part of century, the period known as the the project aims to shed light on Silver Age of poetry in Russia, ex- the less-known facts of their lives, pressed an affinity with such mod- which can be found in museums, ern ideas as equal rights and op- memorials, libraries, open public portunities, tolerance, emotional spaces, on monuments, in famous openness and sustainability. cafés and literary salons where Anna Akhmatova, Marina Tsve- new ideas were formed, and in taeva and Zinaida Gippius were the memorial houses where they those few first women whose were born, brought up, and wrote names went down in the history their first poems. The route also of world literature.1 Having to deal includes contemporary cultural or- with gender discrimination and ganizations inspired by their work suffering official disfavour in their (contemporary cultural organiza- own country, they proved that in tions are also concerned parties any circumstances a woman can since, in their operation, they are inspired by the artistry and her- itage of Russian women writers). 1 The three women poets are not Presenting the world outlook of presented in chronological order, beginning with Gippius as the eldest and ending with these women writers is a no less Tsvetaeva as the youngest, but they are rath- important task, as it has trans- er presented in the order of their literary formed the way we live and is still (poetic) significance in Russia, beginning with Akhmatova and ending with Gippius. 48 stay true to herself and remain She was the third child of six active, inventive and decisive, and children in the family. There were equal to men in all respects. That few books in the house, but her is why we believe that our cultur- mother knew many poems and al route serves as encouragement recited them by heart. Sevastopol, to keep an open mind and avoid where her grandfather lived, and stereotyping, and to show how im- where she spent much of her time, portant it is to create conditions became a meaningful city for her in which every person can discov- childhood and youth. er their talent and potential, and which is at the heart of our society From her childhood onward, today. the poet stood out among her peers – “I got the nickname ‘wild Anna Akhmatova girl’ because I walked barefoot, wandered around without a hat, Anna Akhmatova (23 June jumped from a boat into the open 1889 – 5 March 1966) was a dis- sea, swam during a storm, lay in tinguished and influential poet, the sun until my skin peeled, and translator and literary critic short- thus shocked every provincial Sev- listed for the Nobel Prize in 1965 astopol young lady” (Ахматова and 1966. Long being in official 2014, 298). She also possessed the disfavour, she was allowed to re- gift of clairvoyance. ceive the Italian literary prize Etna Taormina in 1964 and an honor- The family would later move to ary degree from Oxford Universi- Tsarskoe Selo, near St. Petersburg, ty in 1965. Her masterpiece “Po- where at the age of 11 she started ema bez geroya” [Poem without writing poetry. Andrei Gorenko was a Hero], which was not published not interested in his daughter’s lit- until 1976, reflects the depicted erary experiments at all. Moreover, period – the revolution, war and he was dismissive of them, he cate- the repressions – so brightly and gorically forbade her to use her real intensely that it remains as touch- family name, so as not to disgrace ing and thought-provoking today him. Anna turned to the family tree as it was for her contemporaries. and found that the surname of her grandmother on her maternal side, Akhmatova was born at Bolshoy Akhmatova, sounded powerful and Fontan, near the Black Sea port majestic. The grandmother of the of Odessa. Her father, Andrey future poet believed that her family Gorenko, a naval engineer, and her were descended from the famous mother, Inna Stogova, were both Ahmed Khan (Khan Akhmat) from descended from Russian nobility. the Great Horde – which is how the pseudonym Anna Akhmatova came to be. Defiant Trajectories 49

Her talent, sharp mind and It is symbolic that in an epi- striking appearance have never gram written in the summer of ceased to inspire artists, poets and 1957 Akhmatova would say about writers. One can study the history herself: “I taught women to speak of 20th-century art in Russia and ...” (Ахматова 2005, 218). In the Europe just looking at her portraits book Contemporaries. Portraits and (Ситалова 2016). Numerous fa- Etudes (1962), Korney Chukovsky mous artists admired her person- writes of Akhmatova: “Women had ality and chose her as their ideal remained mute for many centu- muse. The story of the 12 portraits ries until she taught them to reveal painted by Amedeo Modigliani, their joys, pains and aspirations in with whom Akhmatova had a warm poetry”. and friendly relationship long be- fore his international popularity, is Celebrated as one of the great- very interesting. She became not est Russian poets, Akhmatova had only his favourite muse but also to endure plenty in her life and a beloved person, and one of the experienced numerous personal few who understood his work. Lat- tragedies. Three of her close fam- er, she was one of the first to write ily members fell victims to the re- and publish Memories of Modigliani gime’s repressive policies. Her first (Ахматова 2014, 571) in defence of husband Nikolay Gumilyov was him and his historical mission. executed by shooting in 1921; her third husband Nikolai Punin died It is said that Akhmatova had in the Gulag in 1953; her only son love affairs with the most famous Lev Gumilyov spent more than a writers, scientists, and artists. She decade in prison and forced-la- chose men who were not inferior bour camps. The unbearable grief to her in intelligence, talent, and of wives and mothers of “enemies strength of character. She was an of the people” is reflected in one of equal assistant to her husbands the most powerful of Akhmatova’s in their work and in their art. She poems, “Requiem”. was the first to publish the works of her husband, Nikolai Gumilyov. In 1941, when Hitler attacked She also helped her second hus- the USSR, Akhmatova, along with band, Vladimir Shileyko, an orien- many other women, took part in talist and a poet and a specialist in defence of Leningrad – the city she Ancient Egypt, with the translation saw as her hometown. Under con- of his scientific works. She also stant bombardment the poet con- went on to help her third husband tinues to write verse and makes (Nikolay Punin, Akhmatova’s third inspiring announcements on the spouse, being an art historian, also radio. found her support). 50

Amedeo Modigliani, Anna Akhmatova, 1911; The Anna Akhmatova Literary and Memo- rial Museum, wing of Fountain House, St Petersburg, Russia. Defiant Trajectories 51

Then her evacuation to Tash- ligentsia, eventually became “Anna kent followed, where she spoke of all the Russias”, as Marina Tse- in hospitals, recited poetry to taeva would later put it (Tsvetaye- wounded soldiers, and “waited va 1922, 87). agog for the news of Leningrad, of the front”. Aware of her calling Marina Tsvetaeva and mission to be with her peo- Marina Tsvetaeva (8 October ple, she conveyed through poetry 1892 – 31 August 1941) – Russian a message to the people, reveal- poet, writer, translator. ing a courage and dedication that contributed greatly to the victory Marina Tsvetaeva was born on of the whole country: “...The living, 8 October 1892 in Moscow. Her fa- the dead: none are dead for fame” ther, Ivan Tsvetaev, was a doctor of (untitled, 1942). Roman literature, an art historian, director of the Rumyantsev Muse- “None fears to die under the um, and the founder of the Muse- bullet’s siege, / None bitters to lose um of Fine Arts (now the Pushkin one’s home here, / And we will pre- State Museum of Fine Arts). Her serve you, great Russian speech, / mother, Maria Main, was a talent- Russian great word, we all bear.” ed pianist who put all her energy (from the poem “Courage”, 1942) into raising her children, Marina Recalling that period later in and Anastasia, to become musi- life she would write: “I was lucky cians. to have lived in that time and wit- After the death of Maria Main, nessed events that can’t be com- when Tsvetaeva was just 14 years pared to any others” (Ахматова old, the mother’s music lessons 2014, 285). waned. But her melodious charac- She lived her life with digni- ter remained in the poems Tsve- ty and always stayed true to her taeva began to write at the age moral principles, with her spiritual of six – in Russian, German and integrity and nobility intact, no French simultaneously. matter what kind of difficulties In her quest to find herself, and challenges she was forced Tsvetaeva, like Akhmatova, re- to endure. The poet carried her ferred to the history of her family, burden with such grace that her first of all to the female line. Mean- fate became the symbol of great while, her knowledge of her ances- non-compliance and endurance, try was rather intuitive, mystical: which is precisely why Akhmatova, “The genius of our family, of the who belonged to the Russian intel- female line, of my mother’s fam- 52 ily was the genius of early death ent in the poet whose life also and unhappy love”. In September strayed far from the commonly ac- 1914, in her early twenties, Tsve- cepted standards. taeva wrote the famous poem “To Grandmother” (Цветаева 2016, In 1910 Tsvetaeva published 40): “Grandmother! – / This fierce her first collection of poems The rebellious spirit/ In my heart – do Evening Album with her own mon- I get it from you?...”. Marina Tsve- ey, to which the masters of Rus- taeva never knew her grandmoth- sian poetry such as Valery Bryusov, er, Maria Bernatskaya, a young Maximilian Voloshin and Nikolai Polish woman who died after giv- Gumilev responded positively. In ing birth to her mother. She saw Koktebel, at Voloshin’s house, Ma- her grandmother only in a portrait. rina met Sergei Efron, the son of Most likely, she was not aware that Yakov Efron and Elizabeth Durno- her great-grandmother, Marianna vo, members of a revolutionary Ledokhovskaya, had come from a political organization The Narod- family of Polish descendants of the naya Volya (People’s Will). In Janu- Great Sejm, the authors of the Pol- ary 1912, they married and soon ish Constitution; that the Catholic two books were published: The Saint Ursula belonged to the same Magic Lantern by Tsvetaeva and Ledóchowski family (Minakowski). The Childhood by Efron. The next Tsvetaeva noticed the recurring collection of Tsvetaeva’s poems expression of Polish features, she From Two Books consisted of previ- felt, in her rebellious temper. In ously published verses. It marked addition, the very name she bore, a sort of line between her peaceful Marina, was reminiscent of Marina youth and the poet’s tragic mature Mniszek, the infamous Polish-Rus- years. sian princess. In 1912, their first daughter, About her “poetic ancestry” Ariadne, was born, and, in 1917, Tsvetaeva wrote: “Some ancestor their second daughter, Irina, came of mine was a violinist, / A rider into the world. The family endured and a thief at the same time. / Is the First World War in Moscow, this not why my taste wanders in a house in Borisoglebsky Lane. And hair smells of wind?.../ So my Sergey Efron was conscripted in ancestor was a violinist./ I became 1917; later he moved to Turkey – such a poet” (Цветаева 2016, and then to Europe. Marina Tsve- 47; Tsvetaeva, RuVerses). Through taeva stayed with the two children the gypsy theme she claimed the in Moscow and did not receive any inseparability of good and evil as news about her husband during a sign of the diversity of life, of a the Civil War. In February 1920, the comprehensive dedication to love, younger daughter died of starva- nature, creativity, qualities inher- tion in a boarding school. A year Defiant Trajectories 53 later, news of Efron came from masters Dmitry Merezhkovsky and abroad and Tsvetaeva decided to Zinaida Gippius, Vladislav Khoda- go to him. sevich, and Ivan Bunin. Tsvetaeva lived on casual earnings: she lec- Tsvetaeva and Efron met in Ber- tured, wrote articles, and did trans- lin, in May 1922, where she later lations. Meanwhile, her daughter published a total of five books. Then and husband dreamed of return- in the Czech Republic great poems ing to their homeland. like “The Poem of the Hill” and “The Poem of the End” appeared. There The first to leave for Moscow she wrote so-called “Russian” fairy- was Ariadne Efron, in March 1937. tale poems like “Molodets” [Fine She was a graduate of the École fellow], “Pereulochki” [Lanes], “Ari- du Louvre, an art historian and adne”2 and started to write “Kryso- graphic artist. Ariadne got a job at lov” [The Ratcatcher], a rethinking a Soviet magazine which was pub- of an old German legend [The Pied lished in French. In the fall of 1937, Piper of Hamelin legend]. While in Sergei Efron fled to Moscow and exile, Tsvetaeva’s epistolary affair settled in a dacha in Bolshevo. Life with Boris Pasternak endured for seemed to be getting better. Then almost 14 years: “What amazing in June 1939, Tsvetaeva came to poems you write! / How painful the USSR. Two months later, Ari- that now you are bigger than me! adne was arrested, and six weeks / Actually, you are an outrageous- after that, Sergei Efron. A period of ly great poet!” Pasternak wrote to poverty and wandering began for Tsvetaeva (Коркина & Шевеленко Marina and the fourteen-year-old 2004, 95). Georgy. They lived with relatives in Moscow, at the Writers’ House In 1925, the Tsvetaeva-Efron of Art in Golitsyno; and Tsvetaeva family moved with their son Geor- was unable to publish her work. gy to Paris. Tsvetaeva’s poetry eve- nings were a great success and On 8 August 1941, in the midst her poems were published. The of the fascist offensive on Moscow, last edition of the book Posle Rossii Tsvetaeva and her son were evacu- [After Russia] published in her life- ated to Yelabuga. There she unsuc- time appeared in 1928 in Paris. cessfully applied for a maid’s job in But the disagreements between the kitchen. “She completely lost the independent Marina Tsvetaeva her head, completely lost her will; and the “old” Russian intelligentsia she was suffering terribly,” Geor- in exile had become increasingly gy later wrote about his mother’s apparent. Her manners were too last days (Эфрон 2007, 253). On 31 different from the habits of the August, Marina Tsvetaeva commit- ted suicide. By a strange, mystical coincidence, on the same day forty 2 https://cvetaeva.su/ariadna/ 54 years earlier, her cousin, the Polish means of cognition: attaining not poet Nikolay Bernatskiy, had com- scientific knowledge, but higher, mitted suicide in Lviv. complete knowledge of being, na- ture, a different coordinate system, Suicide is a grievous sin in Chris- where good and evil, estimates tianity. However, with the permis- and judgments do not exist. In her sion of Patriarch Alexy II of Mos- work, Tsvetaeva fully realized her cow, the Russian Orthodox Church motto: “One of many, one for all, (Moscow Patriarchate) allowed a and one against all.” memorial service for her on the 50th anniversary of Tsvetaeva’s Zinaida Gippius death. “I gathered records of Tsve- taeva’s exile to Yelabuga, about the Zinaida Gippius (20 November conditions of her terrible life there. [O.S. 8 November] 1869 – 9 Sep- It is highly likely that such living tember 1945), critic, writer, poet. conditions drove her to commit Contemporaries called Zinaida suicide,” said Protodeacon Andrey Gippius the “Satanessa” (the “dev- Kuraev (Кураев & Кириллина, il woman”), a “witch”, a “decadent 2012). Madonna”, and a “living legend”, for her peculiar beauty, sharp Georgy Efron perished on the tongue, and courage. Her best front in 1944. His father had been work was herself: she was both an executed in October 1941. Ariadne author and a woman who loved to Efron was rehabilitated in 1955. play all these roles and more. She After returning from exile, she began to write poetry at the age of started to translate and prepare 16; later, she created many nov- Tsvetaeva’s works for publication els and articles, and became the and wrote memoirs about her. The founder of several literary salons first posthumous collection of po- in Russia and Europe. ems by Marina Tsvetaeva entitled Izbrannoye (Selected Poems of Ma- Zinaida Gippius was born in rina Tsvetaeva) was published in 1869 in Belyov, where her father the USSR in 1961, 20 years after Nikolai Gippius, a respected lawyer her death. These poems were met worked. The family often moved with great success and popularity. due to Nikolai’s work, so Zinaida and her three sisters received little The strength of Tsvetaeva’s po- formal education. ems and the strength of her char- acter are undeniable. The driving After the death of Nikolai Gippi- force behind her work was her us, his wife and daughters moved life, and first and foremost, war to Moscow. However, Zinaida soon and revolution. Tsvetaeva’s poet- became ill and moved to Yalta, and ry shows how art can serve as a then in 1885 to her relatives in Tif- lis (now Tbilisi). It was then that Zi- Defiant Trajectories 55 naida Gippius began to write poet- life: about the spiritual discord of ry. “I wrote all sorts of poems, but a person exhausted by disbelief, hid or destroyed the serious ones about the fear of death and fear of and kept only the humorous ones” life, about God... It was then that (Гиппиус 2019, 5). those big words would be uttered, which would indicate a turn in the In 1888, in Borjomi, a resort course of new Russian literature – town near Tiflis, Gippius met the a change from “I” to “Idea”, “Ideal”, poet Dmitry Merezhkovsky. A year “Word”, “Absolute”, and God. And later they were married in the Zinaida Gippius, who stood at the Church of Michael the Archangel. crossroads, at the origin of this They lived together for 52 years turn, was impossible not to notice. without, as Gippius later wrote, She declared herself too imperti- spending a single day apart. nently, and her words “I love my- self as God himself...” were sim- In 1889, she and her husband ply too bold. Gippius was also an came to Petersburg, a city where early presence in the symbolism the majestic shadows of Pushkin, that was emerging in Russia at the Gogol, and Dostoyevsky roamed time; and she was elevated to the the streets, a city in which it was rank of a “senior symbolist” (deca- easy to get lost, dissolve, and dent) during her lifetime. where the provincial poets, thou- sands just like her, had perished. Her name continually appeared on the pages of literary magazines Initially, she tried to get used old and new, she published collec- to and steep herself in the liter- tions of her poems and prose, she ary life of Petersburg. At that time would write plays, act as a literary there were many places where critic, was venomous, and often important and useful literary ac- wicked, but invariably bright and quaintances could be made – the intelligent – qualities that were famous “Fridays” of Yakov Polon- highly valued by her fans and her sky, Literary Fund evenings, meet- opponents in equal measure. And ings in numerous literary clubs there were many of both in her life and societies. Such acquaintanc- when she lived in St. Petersburg, es were useful, not because they where she spent almost thirty could help get one published in a years and where she managed to well-known magazine, but because claim her own very special place; they showed her certain things and then, in exile, where she re- with great clarity: it was all wrong, mained at the heart of the literary and it was not only about that. A life of Europe. little time would pass, and from the pages of the Northern Herald And not simply owing to her magazine she would talk about her great literary talent, but rather as 56 the result of her personality and 1920 the Merezhkovskys emigrat- particular character traits, she was ed to France, for good. the creator, the initiator of the idea. In 1927, on Gippius’s initiative, a literary and philosophical Sun- Her house from 1900 until 1910 day society was founded under the served as the main literary sa- name Green Lamp in Paris, which lon in St. Petersburg which drew included writers and thinkers the attention of the entire literary from abroad, such as Ivan Bunin, community. She helped Alexander Mark Aldanov, Nikolai Berdyaev, Blok launch his literary debut, she George Ivanov, George Adamovich introduced the upstart Osip Man- and Vladislav Khodasevich, who delstam into literary society, and gathered together in the Merezh- she owned the first review of the kovskys’ house. They reported on poems of then-unknown Sergei philosophical, literary and social Yesenin. issues, discussed the mission of lit- erature in exile, and talked about The Russian Revolution of 1905 “neo-Christian” concepts that were introduced new themes into the being developed in the Merezhk- work of Zinaida Gippius: she be- ovskys’ poems. came interested in social and polit- ical issues. Civic motives emerged In 1939, the collection of Gip- in her poetry and prose. The poet pius’s poems entitled Siyania [The together with her husband op- Shining Ones] was published in posed autocracy as well as con- Paris, which was to be her final servatism, and spent more than collection of poetry: subsequent- two years in exile in Paris. ly, only individual poems and in- troductory articles to collections In 1908 the couple returned to would appear. The poems consti- St. Petersburg. From 1908 to 1912 tuting Posledniy krug [The Last Cir- Zinaida Gippius published two col- cle] collection are permeated with lections of short stories, Black on a sense of nostalgia and loneliness. White and Moon Ants, which she considered her best work. In 1911, Dmitry Merezhkovsky died in in the magazine Russian Thought 1941. Gippius took the loss of her [Russkaya Mysl], Gippius published husband very hard. “I died, the only her novel The Demon Dolls, which thing left to die is the body”, she became part of an unfinished tril- wrote after her husband’s death ogy. At the time, she published the (Гиппиус 2001, 440). She dedicat- collection of critical articles Literary ed the last years of her life to work Diary under the pseudonym Anton on her memoirs, the biography of Krainy. Gippius denounced the her deceased spouse, and to the October Revolution; then in early long poem The Last Circle, which Defiant Trajectories 57 was only published much later, in Ахматова, Анна. Стихотворения 1972. и поэмы. Эпиграмма («Могла ли Биче словно Дант творить..», Zinaida Gippius only survived стихотворение). Москва, Издательство «Эксмо», 2005. Dmitry Merezhkovsky by four years. She died on 9 September Ахматова, Анна. Стихотворения. Воспоминания. Москва, 1945, at the age of 76. She was Издательство «Эксмо», 2014. buried in the Russian cemetery at Saint-Genevieve-des-Bois, near Гиппиус, Зинаида. Живые лица. Москва, Азбука-Аттикус, 2019. Paris, in a single grave together with her husband. Гиппиус, Зинаида. Собрание сочинений, комплект из 15 книг, Zinaida Gippius’s heritage is pre- Москва, Дмитрий Сечин, 2001. sented in the Museum of the Silver Коркина Е. В. & Шевеленко Age (Moscow) and the Library of И. Д. Марина Цветаева и Борис Пастернак. Души начинают видеть. the Silver Age in Yelabuga (Yelabu- Письма 1922-1936 гг. Вагриус, ga, the Republic of Tatarstan). The Москва, 2004. list of memorial sites includes the Протодиакон Андрей Кураев Mourouzis house in Saint Peters- & Татьяна Кириллина. Правмир, 8 burg (24 Liteiny Prospect) and her октября, 2012. other apartment in St. Petersburg Ситалова, А.Н. Анна Ахматова в (83 Chaikovskogo Street). Further контексте живописи и музыки. As- research would be required to de- pectus, № 1(10), 2016, С. 28-31. termine the exact addresses of the Цветаева, Марина. places she stayed while in Moscow, Стихотворения, Москва, Звонница- Yalta and Kislovodsk. МГ, 2016. Эфрон, Георгий. “Письмо Г. С. Translated by Anastasia Kazako- Эфрона С. Д. Гуревичу от 8 января va, Natalya Salnikova, MGIMO Mos- 1943 г.”, С. 253 – Дневники. В 2-х cow State Institute of Foreign Affairs томах. Том 2. 1941-1943 годы. of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Москва, Вагриус, 2007.

Works cited Photo credits

Minakowski, M. J. “Marina Cwieta- A. Akhmatova: Kuzma Petrov-Vod- jew”, in: Genealogia potomków Sejmu kin. Portrait of Anna Akhmatova. Wielkiego, http://www.sejm-wielki.pl/b/ 1922/ Wikimedia Commons/ Public sw.852199 Accessed 13 July 2020. Domain. Tsvetaeva, Marina. “My ancestor M. Tsvetaeva: Pyotr Ivanovich was a rider...” RuVerses. URL: https:// Shumov, 1925, Wikimedia Commons / ruverses.com/marina-tsvetaeva/my- Public Domain. ancestor-was-a-rider/5845/. Accessed: 7 February 2021. Z. Gippius: Wikimedia Commons / Public Domain. Tsvetayeva, Marina. Vyorsty I, Mos- cow, 1922, p. 87. Biljana Dojčinović The European Routes of Jelena J. Dimitrijević1

Jelena J. Dimitrijević Defiant Trajectories 59

1 Jelena J. Dimitrijević (1862–1945) close, up until the second half of was born in the post-Ottoman Em- the 1980s, her works were neither pire Principality of Serbia, and died reprinted nor discussed, except in the Federal People’s Republic of in some very narrow scholarly cir- Yugoslavia. She spent most of her cles. Thanks to feminist literary life in Serbia and the Kingdom of critics, interest in her work has Yugoslavia. She was 16 when Ser- since soared, and her work is now bia gained its independence at both reprinted and part of primary the Congress of Berlin after 500 school curricula, as well as trans- years under the Ottoman Empire. lated into foreign languages. Re- It is known that Jelena J. Dimitrije- cent translations of Jelena J. Dim- vić took part in the Balkan Wars, itrijević’s writings include Pisma which were fought to end the Em- iz Soluna [Letters from Salonika], pire’s five centuries of rule over translated into Greek in 2008, and the Balkans. Self-educated, fluent into English and Italian in 2018, in French, German, English, Italian and Letters from India (Pisma iz In- and Turkish, among other languag- dije), translated into Hindi and Eng- es, she was an inveterate traveller lish in 2016. The story Amerikanka and went to many countries of [The American Woman] was also Western and Southeastern Eu- translated in 2020. rope, North America, North Africa, and Asia (Project Knjiženstvo). Herein her vision of Europe as presented in her novels and trav- From her death in 1945, as elogues is discussed. Dimitrijević World War Two was coming to a travelled extensively through Eu- rope, and even when travelling to 1 This paper has been written within the United States or to the Middle the framework of the project Knjiženstvo, The- ory and History of Women’s Writing in Serbian and Far East, Europe remained her until 1915, funded by the Ministry of Educa- reference point. In her prose and tion, Science and Technological Development poetry, she sees the Balkans, from of the Republic of Serbia. 60

Niš all the way to Salonika, more as understanding America. Her trave- a part of the Orient than as a part logue from her journey around the of Europe. Yet she left fewer traces world (1926–1927) works similarly. of Western Europe in her work: we learn about her love for London, Oriental Europe the centre of the Western world Dimitrijević’s first works were before New York became such a inspired by Turkish culture. When shiny star in the constellation of only 19 years old, Jelena married the world’s great cities. Also, in Jovan Dimitrijević and moved from her poetry collection from around Aleksinac to the city of Niš (Project 1930 in French, we find a poem in Knjiženstvo).3 Her husband was a which she seems to be preparing military officer and an avid read- for her final “mystical journey”, as er who supported her intellectual the title announces. But this is not pursuits. In Niš, she began learning her concluding poem. Some time the Turkish language and was ac- later, she wrote the following vers- cepted in the harems. Her literary es in the poem entitled “Paris”, in output of this period is a rich one, which the city of light supremely beginning with the volume of Jele- illuminates her mundane life. nine pesme [Jelena’s Poems], Pisma Before Death comes to take iz Niša o haremima [Letters from Niš me away on Harems], the novella Đul-Mariki- na prikažnja [Đul-Marika’s Story, While waiting for its inevitable 1901], the short stories Fati-sultan, visit Safi-hanum, and Mejrem-hanum (1907), the reportage Letters from According to the supreme law Salonika (1908, and published as a of Eternity book in 1918), and the novel Nove I feel a fervent desire and an [New Women, 1912]. unusual courage Jelena’s Poems is the first and To open my wings, my wings only collection of poetry by Jelena tired from wandering, J. Dimitrijević published during her lifetime: she continued to write po- One more time.2 etry almost until the end of her life, but never published another col- In the American travelogue, lection – though one was planned, written during her journey there as the book carried the subtitle in 1919–1920, Europe appears as Volume One.4 All her poetry after a continent deeply wounded by war, and as the reference point for 3 She signed her works as Jelena Jov. Dimitrijević, or Jelena J. Dimitrijević. 2 Originally written in French. See 4 There is also in Novi Svet ili u Am- 2020, pp. 29-30. erici godinu dana [The New World or A Year Defiant Trajectories 61

1894 was published in periodicals Dimitrijević wrote about harems or remained in manuscript form. as a non-Muslim woman guest This collection “presents images who knew both the language and of multicultural Istanbul/Constan- the customs, and one who had tinople, where two elements – the great empathy for Muslim wom- Ottoman and the Byzantine – in- en. This work has been described tertwine and merge” (Dojčinović as an epistolary novel, but it is also & Koch 2017). This earned her the a “sedentary travelogue”, because nickname “the Serbian Sappho” the author was exploring parts of as it was permeated with a lot of the city closed to others. The “mi- erotic meditation about the beauty crospace” of the Harem marks the of women. This “gender transgres- beginning of the route around the sion” came to the fore again in her world that took Dimitrijević further short stories from 1912 and 1924, east, to Skopje and Salonika, Istan- in U Americi “nešto se dogodilo” bul, Cairo, and India; but we must [“Something Happened” in Ameri- not forget that this also represents ca]. a depiction of a part of Europe at the very end of the 19th century.5 Letters from Niš about Harems, published in Belgrade in 1897, Her novella Đul-Marika’s Story represents a special type of trav- (or, more precisely Đul-Marika’s Per- elogue. Although Dimitrijević did formance, as it is about narration as not travel outside the city in which performance) was first published she lived at the time, she was on in 1901. It is a story set in Niš, but a special route. That is to say, she this time in a Serbian community was describing the Turkish harems awaiting liberation from Turkish of Niš at the time. Harems were rule. Despite the strong social and the female parts of Muslim homes, religious divisions, we find a mix- and it was forbidden for any males ture of traditions in many aspects: to enter them except for the clos- in the first instance, of clothes, est family members. Non-Muslim furniture, and dish and tableware. women were also banned from en- More importantly, the lives of Ser- tering. However, by the time Jelena bian women were determined by was writing about them, a number the rules of the patriarchy, just as of Western European women trav- was the case with Muslim women ellers were accepted in harems as in Letters from Niš, Letters from Sa- guests, but they were largely nei- lonika, in other stories, and in the ther well-informed nor particularly novel New Women. sympathetic about what they saw. Letters from Salonika is a collec- in America], published in 1934, an announce- ment of the collection Sedam mora i tri okeana 5 Microspace (mikroprostor) is a [Seven Seas and Three Oceans] subtitled as term coined by Jovana Reba Kulauzov in her Slovodni stihovi [Free Verses]. 2010 study. 62 tion of letters Dimitrijević wrote in the Serbian narrator prevails, in Salonika and sent to her Belgrade this book Turkish women are giv- friend Lujza Jakšić from 2 August en a voice with which to articulate to 11 September 1908, at the very their ideas and concerns (Dojči- outset of the revolution of the nović & Koch 2017). Young Turks. Dimitrijević explains to her friend the motivation that For Dimitrijević, the issue of the prompted her ambitious enter- veil is the issue of the “right to the prise: “You know that this time I sun”, the basic human right to feel have prepared myself to go to Eu- the sunlight and to move freely. rope and then.... You know why I Letters from Salonika is a multi-gen- turned my way to Asia. That one re text in which we can find forms report in our newspapers, that the such as the letters, travelogue, mi- Turkish women unveiled them- cro-essay, epistolary novel, histori- selves, that they are walking on cal record, anthropological record, the streets with men, women with reportage, interview, apology, even their husbands, had a great impact a short drama. Letters from Saloni- on me” (Dimitrijević 2018, 50). ka can be also read as an episto- lary novel. The collection seems to It is important to note that for be arranged in a plot that unfolds our author Salonika is actually toward a kind of conclusion with all Asia, and not Europe. On the fringe the various components – humour, of Europe, in the Oriental Balkans, poetry, anthropology and drama – she will again encounter the begin- assuming their proper place and ning of a modernization process, function in it. Yet, it is also a trave- but, as usual, she is focused primar- logue, a text that reflects on rather ily on women. The revolution has unfamiliar landscapes and/or situ- only just begun, and she finds in ations from a distinctly subjective Salonika a big oriental celebration point of view. to the strains of the “Marseillaise” and shouts of “Vive la Liberté”. She Initially produced as a private describes the multi-ethnic city, the text, Letters from Salonika became enthusiasm following the declara- a public text when printed in news- tion of the constitution, her visits papers and later published in book to various respected homes (pri- form. Written (actually or ostensi- marily Turkish households, but bly) for one reader, the letters at- also the homes of Salonika Greek tracted a far wider audience. Their and Jewish women called Dönme), appeal to a broader readership is and their discussions of the ad- bound up with their affinity with vantages and disadvantages of genres closer to journalism. We the charshaf (the women’s cover- could legitimately suggest that ing apparel). While in her previous Dimitrijević’s basic idea was to work, Letters from Niš, the voice of undertake a journalistic investiga- Defiant Trajectories 63 tion, and, consequently, what she from what we now call her “Amer- sent to her friend were reports on ican Cycle”. The story entitled “The the issue she had set out to re- American Woman” tells us about search. The historic events serve an encounter between a gentle- as both the background of the man from an unknown European things she was interested in and country and an American lady. It is the impetus of that interest (see told in the first person by a male Dojčinović & Koch 2017). narrator and set in an unnamed city, which, however, can be easily The unresolved status of wom- recognized as London. “The Amer- en, the lack of emancipation from ican Woman” was reprinted in Ser- behind the “cover” of even the New bian in 1918, 2016, 2018 and 2019, Turkish Women, politically aware and published in English in 2020. and resolved to end the “old” rules, Other works in the “American Cy- must have served as the impetus cle” are the story “Something Hap- to write the novel Nove. Published pened in America” (originally writ- in 1912, the novel with a title that ten in French in 1920, published in can be translated as “New Wom- Serbian in 1924, and republished en”, describes the lives of young in 2019), the travelogue The New Turkish women in a harem in Sa- World or A Year in America (origi- lonika. The novel’s plot takes place nally published in 1934, reprinted on the eve of the revolution, when in 2019), as well as a number of old and new values are mixed and poems written during her stay in hard to distinguish. The young girls America in 1919–20 and during are aware of the golden cage they her second visit to the USA in 1927. live in but cannot do anything to Many of these poems were pub- set themselves free. In the final lished in contemporary journals part of the novel, we find a pledge and magazines; today, all of the to educate all female children, in manuscripts are kept in the Na- contrast to the decorative “knowl- tional Library of Serbia in Belgrade. edge” the young harem women were then receiving, and which Europe in the only led them to nurture unrealis- American Travelogue tic expectations. The story “The American Wom- While her first period of writ- an” (“Amerikanka”), published for ing was based on Oriental culture the first time in Srpski književni in Serbia and the entire Balkan glasnik in 1912, marked a turning region, her second addressed not point in Dimitrijević’s career. Six only the West but the New World years later, she reprinted the story itself – America. The same year the as a booklet.6 The story represents novel Nove was published, Dimitri- jević also published the first piece 6 Американка. Сарајево: И. Ђ. Ђурђевић, 1918. Republished in 2016, and 64 a break with her focus on the lives as to a female companion; and of Muslim women and a turn to- when once I got carried away and wards other, Western, topics. almost lost the train, she took my hand and pulled me into the train, The story is located in an and then laughed at me. If only unnamed European city, where she knew why I had gotten carried the narrator meets an American away! And that the touch of her woman and falls in love with her. hand drove me insane: made me The lady has some traits of Hen- want to kneel before her, kiss her ry James’s Isabelle Archer, yet the hands, her dress, and tell her the encounter during the journey re- craziest sort of things, beg her not minds us of Thomas Mann’s Death to leave me so that we should live in Venice, also published in 1912. together as husband and wife… The story’s protagonist feels a But she brought me to my senses strong erotic magnetism towards with her free behavior. As free as the young woman, and even tries a man, she had all the traits of her to kiss her once. Interestingly female gender: to motherly take enough, a contemporary critic liked care even of those who were far the story, and did not find anything older than her. (Dimitrijević 2020b, scandalous in the fact that a wom- 4-5) an had written it. On the contrary, he wrote that it had obviously been Goran Petrović, the translator written by a woman because the of the story into English, writes that character’s passion was not fierce “[…] the narrator (that is, the au- enough, or in other words, that it thor, for the narrator actually sets was “suffering from femininity” (Je- forth Jelena J. Dimitrijević’s views) vtić 1918, 150). Although the story not only expresses her firm belief is in great measure the (hi)story in the righteousness of feminism, of a passion, it is obvious that the but also prophesies the coming central point of interest is actually of a new age of gender equality, women’s emancipation. which he, obviously, does not view as some kind of an abstract theory, One day she invited me for an but rather as an entirely practica- excursion. I was beside myself with ble idea” (Petrović 2020, viii). joy. “Now is the chance to change our relationship”, I thought and That the unnamed city is Lon- rejoiced. But on the trip she was don was confirmed when, in 1934, just the same as in the hotel: nat- Dimitrijević published the trave- ural, free – with male fellow trave- logue The New World or A Year in lers she spoke as with her female America, some decade and a half friends, and to me she behaved after the actual journey. After WWI, in 1919, Jelena J. Dimitrijević began her year-long trip to America. In then again in 2018. Defiant Trajectories 65 this travelogue she records a kind Katharine Flagg, an American from of history of private lives, with the Brockton who was the inspiration focus clearly on women. for her story “The American Wom- an”, has been closed, as during the “Nothing calls me to America, war it was turned into a hospital. but something makes me run from Europe”, runs the first sentence of While crossing the English her travelogue, with the title of the Channel, it seemed to me that I first chapter “Running Away from would arrive in the land of oblivi- Memories”. Jelena J. Dimitrijević on before getting over the ocean. lost her husband on the battlefield England. It is not on the bloody in 1915, which must have been the continent, although it is in Europe, hardest of all the memories from but on the island, where blood was which she was running. not shed. And when I arrived in London, I headed joyfully for Rus- At the beginning of the trave- sell Square, for Montague Street, logue, on European soil and later, for the hotel Montague, for it is in on the ship, death and destruction this neighbourhood, this street, set the basic tone. The first pages this hotel that I would find my dear of the travelogue present an image memories; I would find my gold- of Europe in ruins and in mourn- en tears for which, in sadness, I ing: had cried so many times. And, of Mothers, sisters, and young course, what went with me from wives are still wearing black. Our my country, my pain, would stay on old Europe, the bulwark of modern the European continent. But, alas! human civilization, was turned into What a delusion! When I ordered a bloody battlefield of the Asian the coachman to stop in front of Montague conquerors of yore. the hotel , he turned and said: “What!?” The former hotel But Europe is now a sacred Montague had been used as a nurs- part of the world, too. I have gone ing facility during the war… There through it with horror and revul- it is, upon my first step – the war! sion, but also with piety; for from I took lodging in the same street, its collective pale tombs, Europe at a different hotel, and on enter- has become the world’s collective ing the lobby, the first thing that Pantheon.7 (Dimitrijević 1934, 2) caught my attention was a woman in black!8 (Dimitrijević 1934, 2) Even England, though an island, seems to be full of traces of war Her journey across the Atlan- and suffering. The Montague Ho- tic on the ship “Rotterdam”, from tel, where years back she had met Plymouth, England to the USA be-

7 Translated by Goran Petrović. 8 Translated by Goran Petrović. 66 gan on 12 September 1919 and race. Young women leave their lasted six days. While on board, parents and seek jobs to make she notices that the ocean looks their living in cities other than their like a desert, like a “wasteland”. She birthplaces. They work, fall in love pays attention to a group of people quickly, get married, and often di- from Flanders, about whom she vorce even faster. In many ways says: “They are my kin, in terms of this American way of life is com- the hardship, the starvation, the pletely different from the Europe- fear, the humiliation” (Dimitrijević an lifestyle. Even the rich people 1934, 19). from the two continents practice different divisions of work in their When disembarking in America, homes – in America there is not the American citizens are separat- enough household help available, ed from the other travellers, and and they increasingly depend on Jelena finds herself helping a Ger- electric devices. This lifestyle will, man woman whose son, already in the course of 30 years, become an American citizen, had to leave European, too. At one moment, her unattended. Jelena J. Dimitri- fascinated by the magnificent sky- jević tries to comfort the elderly scrapers of more than 50 storeys, lady: “Women are not for war, and the modern means of mechaniza- neither are children…” (Dimitrijević tion and transport that make New 1934, 30), clearly pointing to her York “a monster city”, Dimitrijević sense of tolerance, pacifism and cries out: “Poor old Europe with its compassion, especially for women. elevators and telephones!” (Dimi- trijević 1934: 104) The rest of the travelogue is a story about America, but Europe We can compare this travelogue and Oriental roots always lurk to a fictional work that takes place somewhere in the background. at the same time in New York – F. During her year spent on the East Scott Fitzgerald’s novel, The Great Coast, Jelena J. Dimitrijević encoun- Gatsby. How are these two works tered a world completely different similar? The novel, published in from that from which she came. 1925, is set in 1922. Young and It is the golden age of skyscrap- ambitious Nick Carraway comes to ers, and the time of prohibitions: New York and gets to know his ec- on alcohol, public flirting and centric neighbour Jay Gatsby, who the “shimmy” (dance), as well as organizes glamorous parties. Nick women smoking in public. On the soon learns that Gatsby wants to other hand, women have gained attract the attention of Daisy Bu- the right to vote, although real so- chanan, his old flame. When Gats- cio-political equality is still far from by dares to believe that his fervent complete, especially as regards di- wish to be with Daisy is close to visions along the lines of class and fulfilling his dreams, it soon turns Defiant Trajectories 67 out that neither she nor any of the newly acquired rights, Fitzgerald characters in his circle are worthy depicts two upper-class women of his romantic vision. whose wealth gives them both freedom and the illusion of it. But At first glance, this story does the most interesting point these not have much connection to Dim- two works of letters have in com- itrijević’s travelogue. Upon clos- mon is the First World War. In the er examination, however, we can novel, Gatsby is very proud of his find in her travelogue a quote that decoration from Montenegro: sounds like a summary of the nov- el: “Then came the war, old sport. [...] I was promoted to be a major This is a country of jazz bands and every Allied government gave […] of women’s speeches and me a decoration—even Montene- priestly sermons, and a country of gro, little Montenegro down on the advertisements, or as one would Adriatic Sea!” Little Montenegro! say in “Serbian”, reklama. […] My He lifted up the words and nodded ears are full: ancestors, descend- at them—with his smile. The smile ants, naturalized, assimilated, comprehended Montenegro’s full-blooded, church, school, the Bi- troubled history and sympathized ble, missionaries, busy, rush, hus- with the brave struggles of the tle, downtown, banks, Wall Street, Montenegrin people. It appreciat- the Stock Exchange; and dollars, ed fully the chain of national cir- dollars, dollars...; then the largest, cumstances which had elicited this longest, widest, tallest, America, tribute from Montenegro’s warm the best; patriotism, Americanism, little heart. My incredulity was sub- 9 Americanization... (Dimitrijević merged in fascination now; it was 1934, 94-5) like skimming hastily through a dozen magazines. The place and time of both works are the same. Jelena J. Dimi- He reached in his pocket and a trijević spent seven months in New piece of metal, slung on a ribbon, York during her visit to the States. fell into my palm. She did not attend any Gatsby-like parties, but she quickly realized “That’s the one from Montene- that money was the central driv- gro.” ing force in society there; the pro- hibition on alcohol allows Gatsby To my astonishment, the thing to become fabulously rich. While had an authentic look. Orderi di Dani- Jelena J. Dimitrijević devotes a lot lo, ran the circular legend, Montene- of time to observing middle-class gro, Nicolas Rex. “Turn it.” women’s lives, focusing on their Major Jay Gatsby, I read, For Valour 9 Translated by Goran Petrović. Extraordinary. (Fitzgerald 1974, 72-3) 68

The war in which Fitzgerald’s men’s lives, in their harem-like fictional character has earned his events – yet, she also clearly sees decoration is the one in which the striking differences between Jovan Dimitrijević was killed. WWI them. is the major turning point of the first decades of the 20th century, Of all the women I kept com- and the most important trauma pany with in foreign countries, I widely described by modernist au- am the most interested in Turkish thors. These two works both speak and American women. / Turkish about the same period, only Jelena and American women! What could J. Dimitrijević’s European trauma is they possibly have in common? / A real, and her travelogue describes Turkish woman is an old Eastern America from a particular, peculiar Woman, even when she calls her- point of view – from a European self a new one: she is conservative, and an Oriental perspective simul- passive, a dead past and past only. taneously. / An American woman would be a new one even if she would, out Dimitrijević compares New York of flirting or caprice, claim that and the people of America, espe- she was an old one – progressive, cially women, to Istanbul and Turk- active, a lively presence and – the ish women. This is an interesting future. (Dimitrijević 1934, 96; see comparison as it works along the also Peković 2018) lines of gender. The point where it breaks is political power. On the Conclusion one hand, there are Turkish wom- In 1926, Jelena J. Dimitrijević en deprived even of the “right of set off to travel around the the sun”, while on the other there world. She started from Genova are American women, the majority and proceeded to Egypt, Syria, of whom can vote, who work and Lebanon, and the Holy Land, and can lead independent lives. The then went on to India, Ceylon, largest part of the book portrays China, Japan, Hawaii, the American middle-class American women. West Coast, and then to New She notes their social milieus, the York, from which she returned to fashionable dances, life under pro- Europe. From that journey we have hibition, the wild popularity of mo- the travelogue Seven Seas and Three tion pictures, class and racial divi- Oceans. The first part, published sions, and religious conduct. Most in 1940, and republished in 2016, importantly, she notes that wom- describes her travels in the Middle en, having recently received the East. The second part, which is vote, can now affect political life in largely devoted to India, remained America. She compares American as part of the manuscript kept in to Turkish women on many occa- the National Library of Serbia. It sions – in their separation from Defiant Trajectories 69 consists of 482 pages and was to the Orient (and was a part of it, prepared and published only in too) since her earliest days, this 2020 under the Knjiženstvo project. conversation naturally led to the ironic remark – unsaid, yet record- At the beginning of her long ed. journey, Jelena J. Dimitrijević was 64 years old and a seasoned travel- *** ler. In many ways, this marked her return to the Orient, only this time It is safe to say that the Europe she went all the way. Her travels portrayed in the works of Jelena J. in India began in February 1927. Dimitrijević is often closer to the She travelled from Mumbai to Jai- Orient than to Western Europe, pur, Delhi, Bengal, Chennai (then especially in her writings up until Madras), Kolkata (then Calcutta), 1912. In her travelogues Europe and Varanasi (then Benares). She becomes a point of reference, a frequently addresses the country place she compares to America as “Mother India” and praises the and the Middle and Far East. In honesty and openness of its peo- her writings, Dimitrijević displays a ple. At one moment, one of her cosmopolitan, curious, non-biased hosts advises her to sleep with the spirit, thinking beyond divisions door open as it is very hot; upon and moving easily across social seeing that she is afraid of being and geographical borders. To fol- robbed, he says: low her European and pan-global routes presents an enormous chal- -- Do not be afraid, Lady. There lenge for both present and future is nothing to be afraid of. The peo- generations. ple here are quiet and religious. We do not grab others’ posses- sions. This is India, that is, this is not Europe […]

I smiled and thought: “Poor Eu- rope with its civilization and high culture, look what a reputation it has in the uncivilized ‘wild’ Asia.” (Dimitrijević 2020a, 170)

Europe is again “poor”, as in the American travelogue, only this time not as the result of a lack of wealth and modernization, but rather due to its arrogance and ig- norance about Asian culture. For Jelena J. Dimitrijević, who felt close 70

Works cited

(Dimitrijević, Jelena J.) http://www.knjizenstvo.rs/en/jour- Димитријевић, Јелена Ј. Нови nals/2017/womens-writing-and-cul- свет или у Америци годину дана. ture/turkish-in-cyrillic-deep-transgres- Београд: Ed. Y. P. – N. Y. C., 1934. sion-in-jelena-dimitrijevic-s-writings (Dimitrijević, Jelena Јevtić, B. “Amerikanka”, Kn- J.) Димитријевић, Јелена Ј. jiževni jug, no. 16, Vol. 1, Avgust 1918, „Американка“. Српски књижевни p. 150–1. гласник, књ. 28, св. 2–3, 1912, pp: Fitzgerald, Frances Scott. The Great 81–91 and 161–170. Gatsby. Penguin Books. 1974. Dimitrijević, Jelena J. “Paris“, in (Peković, Slobodanka) Пековић, Au soleil couchant/У сутон, translat- Слободанка. „Сестре Туркиње и ed by Vladimir Đurić, ed. by Zorica сестре Американке”, in Читате ли Bečanović Nikolić, Филолошки Јелену Димитријевић?, Зборник факултет, Народна библиотека радова, Уреднице Биљана Србије (Faculty of Philology, National Дојчиновић, Јелена Милинковић, Library of Serbia) 2020, pp. 29-30. Филолошки факултет Универзитета Dimitrijević, Jelena J. Sedam mora i у Београду, Београд, 2018, pp. 119– tri okeana, Laguna, Beograd. 2016. 130.

Petrović, Goran. “Jelena J. Dimitri- Dimitrijević, Jelena J. Letters from jević and Katherine Flagg: Free-Think- Salonika, translated by Vladimir ing Women from Different Worlds” Bošković, Piscataway: Gorgias Press. in Jelena J. Dimitrijević, The American 2018. Woman, ed. by Biljana Dojčinović, Faculty of Philology, University of Димитријевић, Јелена Ј (Dimi- Belgrade; National Library of Serbia, trijević, Jelena J.). Седам мора и три 2020, pp. iii-xix. океана, Другa књига, ed. by Biljana Dojčinović and Vladimir Đurić, Faculty Project Knjiženstvo http://knjizen- of Philology, University of Belgrade; stvo.etf.bg.ac.rs/sr-lat/authors/jele- National Library of Serbia, 2020a. na-dimitrijevic Dimitrijević, Jelena J. “The Amer- Reba Kulauzov, Jovana. Ženski ican Woman“, translated by Goran Istok i Zapad, Zadužbina Andrejević, Petrović, in Jelena J. Dimitrijević, The Beograd, 2010. American Woman, ed. by Biljana Dojči- nović, Faculty of Philology, University of Belgrade; National Library of Ser- Photo credits bia, 2020b, pp. 2-22. Јелена Ј. Димитријевић. Нови Dojčinović, Biljana and Koch, Mag- свет или У Америци годину дана. dalena 2017. “Turkish in Cyrillic: Deep Београд: Ed. Y. P. – N. Y. C., 1934 / Transgression in Jelena Dimitrijević’s Public domain. works”, in Knjiženstvo, Journal for Stud- ies in Literature, Gender and Culture, no. 7, 2017. Defiant Trajectories 71 Katja Mihurko Poniž Zofka Kveder – Slavic Cultural and Feminist Icon of the Early 20th Century

Zofka Kveder Defiant Trajectories 73

From today’s point of view, manly meaningful, individually and when the notion of a cultural icon collectively, for what is imbued is connected with billions of follow- with feeling and integral to who ers across an array of social media and what we know – or imagine – platforms, the perception of the ourselves to be, we resort to more writer, editor and feminist activ- open, multivalent, and suggestive ist Zofka Kveder as a cultural icon symbolism, to images, to icons. across Central and Southeastern (O’Connell & O’Connell 2008, 961) Europe might seem an exagger- ation. However, in the first three Cultural icons are not always decades of the twentieth century also popular personalities; how- Kveder served as a role model for ever, they can be powerful identi- many women striving for emanci- fication figures for certain groups pation. Clearly, the process of “be- in certain periods. Often, they later coming a cultural icon” is complex: fall into oblivion, but can come to serve as inspirational figures yet Why, one might ask, do some again when similar societal prob- individuals stand out as cultural lems arise. Here, essays and liter- icons, and should they? Ours is a ary texts by her contemporaries in world shaped by symbols and im- which Kveder appears as a central ages. We are bound to select from figure are explored, and Kveder’s and simplify the infinite complexity correspondence is examined in of what we perceive. Somehow we order to determine how her con- must choose and act, must decide temporaries responded to the rep- what to value and strive for, what resentations of womanhood Kved- to fear and guard against. For what er incorporated in her work. can be quantified, we may have recourse to computers and their Zofka Kveder wrote in three algorithms to enable us to select, languages: in Slovenian, Ser- simplify and act. For what is hu- bo-Croatian, and German. During 74 her lifetime, many of her works Kveder’s life were translated and published in Czech, Serbian, Bulgarian, and Pol- Zofka Kveder was born in 1878 ish newspapers and literary maga- in Ljubljana; soon after her birth, zines. She was also a cultural me- however, her family moved to the diator and ardent feminist. Kveder countryside. After two years of pri- was never entirely forgotten as an mary school in her home village, author, as seven volumes of her her father sent her to Ljubljana, selected works were published in where she attended a convent the 1930s. Similarly, articles com- school. Back in her home village, memorating her birth or death she suffered at the hands of her fa- were published over the course of ther’s alcoholism and her mother’s three decades, her books were reg- religious fanaticism before fleeing ularly reprinted, and scholarly arti- to the nearby town of Kočevje, cles about her published; she was where she worked as a secretary in also included in various textbooks. a land surveyor’s office. After sev- However, she was not included in eral months she returned home, the prestigious national collection but her parents did not welcome Zbrana dela slovenskih pesnikov in her. In August 1897, she went to pisateljev [Collected works of Slo- Ljubljana and found a legal prac- venian poets and writers] until tice job copying out files. the arrival of the new millennium. In 1898 she published her first Early attempts by the Slovenian lit- short stories. Her first story was erary historian Erna Muser in the published in the magazine Sloven- 1970s to have her included were ka [Slovene Woman] (1897–1902), severely rejected with the explana- the first Slovene magazine for tion that she was simply not good women. In the years to come, Kve- enough to be included in the (pre- der also published many articles in dominantly male) literary Panthe- which she touched upon numer- on. Owing to her status as a fem- ous issues affecting women, in- inist and cultural icon, there has cluding situations that range from never been a large overview of the women wage earners to women’s author’s life and work. By the same university education. Ljubljana token, the strategies behind her soon proved too small for her and “canonization” have never been in January 1899 she left for Trieste, formally considered, even though where she stayed for some months Slovenian, Croatian, Czech and and, dressed in men’s attire, vis- Serbian literary history has dealt ited the harbour’s dumps, where intensively with both her work and she found inspiration for her writ- persona over the course of the ing. Although it was a vibrant port past two decades. at that time, she could not settle in Trieste but headed for Switzerland Defiant Trajectories 75 to study at a university. After a suc- their divorce (1912), she remarried. cessful interview with the rector, Her second husband, with whom which she had to pass since she she had a church wedding, was the had not graduated from a second- Croatian journalist Juraj Demetro- ary school, she was able to enrol at vić. In 1915, during World War I, Bern University in October 1899. Croatian women chose Kveder as During Kveder’s stay in Switzer- their delegate to the International land, she wrote an interesting no- Women’s Congress at The Hague. vella, Študentke [Female students, Unfortunately, she could not at- 1899-1900], in which she vividly tend this important event due to a depicted the lives of Russian and miscarriage. Bulgarian students whose compa- ny she had enjoyed. However, it In 1917, she began publishing was rather difficult for her to study the magazine Ženski svijet [Wom- and work at the same time, living en’s World], in 1918 renamed Jugo- on her own. She decided to go to slavenska žena [Yugoslav woman], Prague, where her fiancé Vladimir in which she published articles on Jelovšek was studying medicine. women’s movements in Slovenia, Jelovšek was also a decadent poet. Croatia, and other Slavonic coun- On the way to Prague, she spent tries. She was grief-stricken when two months in the artistic capital her eldest daughter Vladoša (a of Munich. student in Prague) died in 1919. The absence of her husband, who She arrived in Prague in March became an important politician 1900 and remained there for six in the post-war Yugoslav govern- years. In 1901, Kveder gave birth ment, and the death of her daugh- to a daughter Vladimira (Vladoša), ter took a heavy toll on her health but her civil marriage to Jelovšek and she spent the following years only took place in 1903. In 1904 she in various spas, trying to recuper- became the editor of the magazine ate. In 1926, when her health had Domači prijatelj [Homefriend]. In somewhat improved, her husband 1906, she moved to Zagreb (Croa- informed her that he wanted a tia), where in 1911 she became the divorce, because another wom- editor of a supplement to the Za- an was expecting his baby. On 21 greb daily newspaper Agramer Tag- November 1926, Kveder commit- blatt named Frauenzeitung [Wom- ted suicide. Two days later, she en’s newspaper]. Her daughters was buried in Mirogoj Cemetery, Marija (Maša) and Mira were born Zagreb. At the funeral, female rep- in 1906 and 1911, but at this time resentatives of Slovene, Croatian, her marriage to Jelovšek – who was and Serbian women’s organiza- having extramarital affairs – fell tions paid their respects (Mihurko apart irreparably. In 1913, soon af- Poniž 2006, 282-285). ter Kveder’s attempted suicide and 76

Kveder’s literary legacy ed women who were not ready to deny their own sexuality upset Kveder’s oeuvre consists of her contemporaries. Many review- prose, dramatic works, literary and ers discredited the collection’s theatre reviews, and feminist writ- artistic value. Among those few ings. The messages in Zofka Kved- who defended her was Slovenian er’s work that describe the role of writer Ivan Cankar (1876–1918), th a woman at the end of the 19 and who himself had to fight the phil- th early 20 century correspond with istine response to his own writing. the realizations, expressed by the He wrote: “Zofka has left a beat- author in her essays, which clearly en path; she is independent; she exhibit the influence of the femi- wanted to say something that she nist discourse of the time (Mihurko saw by herself and felt by herself; Poniž 2016, 146). Primarily she her pictures are not copies of the tells stories about women – her works created by male artists: she contemporaries – as well as her looked through her own eyes, not own stories. Kveder wrote: “I be- through the spectacles patented lieve we women always write only by our worthless tradition.” (Can- about ourselves; our yearnings; kar 1974, 88)10 our hearts” (as quoted in Orožen 1983, 273). Her prose collection Most of her stories feature a fe- Misterij žene [Mystery of Woman, male character in various roles as 1900], which she self-published placed in the foreground. She also in Prague, is an important turning touched on the concept of free love, point in both her creative work and which was an important issue at the Slovenian tradition as a whole. the time, and acknowledged prob- She depicted violence against lems related to forced marriages, women amongst the proletariat, illegitimate motherhood, abortion, as well as more subtle mecha- suicide, prostitution, early death at nisms of constraint, such as those childbirth, and many other themes of pre-arranged middle-class mar- common to life as a woman. riages. For Kveder a woman’s suf- Mothers also have an important fering is connected with the fact part in the author’s short prose: that the society only sees her in domineering mothers, mothers the role of a woman and a mother. alienated from their daughters, When a man does not respect his suffering mothers, mothers who female partner and when poverty depersonalizes both, her physicali- 10 “Zofka je ostavila izhojeno pot; ty and her emotions lead a woman ona je sama svoja; povedati je jotela nekaj, into suffering and complete phys- kar je videla sama in kar je čutila sama; njene ical exhaustion and debilitation. slike niso kopije del, ustvarjenih od moških umetnikov; gledala je s svojimi očmi, ne skozi Her images of proletarian wom- naočnike, patentirane od naše ničvredne en, prostitutes, and emancipat- tradicije.” Defiant Trajectories 77 experience the death of a child, guilt and uselessness which, as she mourning mothers, even mothers demonstrated, could lead to the who commit infanticide. The writ- disintegration of identity and even er also depicted the suffering of a death – and about this she wrote woman who cannot have children with relentlessness, accuracy, and and her love for somebody else’s candour. children. Moreover, Zofka Kveder introduced a whole range of char- Kveder as a literary character in acters – students, artists, teachers the work of her contemporaries and other workers, prostitutes, Kveder’s life was echoed not unusual eccentric women, even only in her writings but in the women who suffer psycho-emo- works of her contemporaries as tional breakdowns. As with many well, whom she clearly inspired. th and ear- authors from the late 19 As a literary figure, Kveder first ly 20th century, Zofka Kveder large- appears in the poems and sketch- ly depicted the incompatibility of es of her husband, decadent Cro- women’s emancipation with mar- atian poet Vladimir Jelovšek, in riage and motherhood, she criti- his collection Simfonije [Sympho- cized the double moral standards nies, 1900], which is dedicated to of the middle class, which is unable her, and in which she emerges to accept a woman enjoying sex as a nervous young woman who without feeling guilty, despite (or grows in a relationship with the because of) her being single and man she loves (the lyrical subject) unmarried. One reason why her from an inexperienced, frightened, teachers, saleswomen, and post childish, yet warm and sincere, office employees are unable to person, physically and psychical- find happiness in love is their fear ly totally subjected to the lyrical of violating the rules of the mid- subject, into a young emancipated dle-class society (Mihurko Poniž & writer. In the decadent rhetorics Parente Čapková 2015, 193-195). of Jelovšek’s poetry Sonja is the In both her journalism and literary Other, who defines herself in her writing, Kveder continually empha- liaison with the poet and grows sized the problems faced by young under his guidance into a modern women, particularly poor young woman. However, her modernity girls, who wanted to study. Kved- is narrowed to literary authorship er rejected the traditional feminine (which is mentioned only in one model. She was interested in con- poem) and sexual freedom. Sonja’s crete possibilities that would allow character is polarized between in- women to overcome their position nocence and promiscuity, and that as the Other, to change their re- is a typical representation of fin de lationship with their own bodies siècle femininity. Sonja looks up to and to overcome the feelings of the smug and egocentric man who 78 is not interested in social reality. Chlapec-Đorđević who published, Kveder’s feminist engagement and just two years after Kveder’s death, everyday struggle for survival are the study Iz praških dana Zofke concealed; Jelovšek ends his col- Kvedrove [From Zofka Kveder’s lection with a poem by the Czech Days in Prague, 1928]. Kveder also modernist poet Josef Svatopluk appears as a literary figure (hid- Machar, who was his role model den behind the initials ZK) in the and later his and Kveder’s friend. novel by Julka Chlapec-Đorđević, Jedno dopisivanje, Fragmenti roma- Machar described Kveder in the na [A Correspondence: The Frag- magazine Čas [The Time] as one of ments of a Novel, 1932]. Alenka the purest, most beautiful souls, as Jensterle Doležal writes that the a hard-working and optimistic per- correspondence between Z. Hásk- son who was brought to Prague by ová and Fran Govekar, Minka Gov- her thirst for knowledge. Howev- ekar’s husband, shows that Chla- er, as Machar writes, she was not pec-Đorđević first wanted to write accepted with open arms but with a book but eventually wrote the snobbism and petit bourgeois nar- aforementioned article: rowness. At the end, he calls her a “little Slovenian dove with a good Chlapec-Đorđević wrote about and golden heart” (Machar 1905, Kveder’s role in Czech culture and 44). Machar’s text is interesting about her life and successful ca- because it features Kveder as a reer in Prague, researching her young, sunny person, full of life. texts and development as a writer. She discovered that the political, This image is later enhanced intellectual, cultural (feminist) and in the writings of Zdenka Hásk- literary environment in Prague ová. She reflected upon their first society during the early years of meeting in the poem Věnovani the 20th century “gave the young, [Dedication] in the collection Ces- self-educated Slovene more stim- tou [The Way, 1920]. Here the Slo- ulation, influence and acceptance venian author is idolized, and her than was possible in any other luminous personality and creative city” and that in Prague Kveder was geniality are exposed. Háskova “surrounded by people with the also wrote an article about their same ideas, motivation and intel- friendship, Jihoslovanské přátelství lectual openness”. When analyzing [A Yugoslavian Friendship], which her literary work, she criticized her was published in 1923. A lengthy feminism, which in her view was biographical text was written by only half-committed, theoretical the Slovenian feminist and Kved- and not sharpened enough. (Jen- er’s friend Minka Govekar. In the sterle Doležal 2016) Serbian cultural space, her mem- ory remained alive thanks to Julka In the German-speaking space, Defiant Trajectories 79

Austrian politician Martha Tausk, Who is the real Zofka, asks Tausk, another of Kveder’s close friends, and answers that her friend might also wrote about her. In her col- have more than just one soul lection of novellas Fernambuk und (Tausk 1930, 21–22). anderes [Fernambuk and Others, 1930], she portrayed Kveder in the A lengthy biographical text was memorial text Die Geschichte einer also written by Slovenian feminist Freundschaft [The Story of a Friend- and Kveder’s friend Minka Gov- ship]. She is interested in Kveder’s ekar. She writes the story about, as “magnificient and free personality” she puts it, “Kveder’s struggle, suf- (Tausk 1930, 3), and not in her lit- fering, tragical mistakes, successes, erary works. She legitimatizes her and failures” (Govekar 1927b, 65), writing in a warm love and lasting and illustrates it with fragments fidelity that bound her with Kved- from Kveder’s letters and works. er. She also reflects her own narra- Her text tries to present Kveder in tive technique: she tells only what relation to her parents, especial- Kveder told her in the hours of ly mother, her husbands and her their true friendship and what re- children but also to her feminist mained in her memory. But in de- friends, who supported her at the scribing her friend’s life, the events end of her life. In her contribution, from her own life intercalate, the the main characteristic of a fem- biography transcends its borders inist biography, which, according and passes into an autobiography. to Liz Stanley, is putting the biog- The narrative is not linear but looks raphee into a network of feminists, retrospectively into the past, at the is realized. events that happened before those In all these works a positive she was talking about. At a certain character dominates. An entire- point the narrative changes into a ly different image is presented dialogue with the dead friend and in the novel Bjegunci [Fugitives, she speaks directly to her and apol- 1933], written by the Croatian writ- ogizes for not understanding her er August Cesarec. Cesarec knew completely in the last years of her Kveder only fleetingly as a friend life. She does not identify with the of her daughter Vladoša (Vladka) biographee but rather establishes who is hidden in the novel behind an intersubjective communication. the protagonist named Buga Vlat- At the end, Martha Tausk asks her- ković. The story tells how Buga’s self how to understand the ambi- father tried to abuse her because guity of Kveder’s life – her courage she resembled her mother, and and incredible life strength on the it tells of Mrs Majstorović’s sense- one hand, and her descent into de- lessness, shallowness, hysteria, pression and despair that lead her haughtiness, and egocentrism (Ce- to suicidal attempts on the other? sarec 1972). Cesarec pathetically 80 idealizes the representatives of the greatest “tragedy of a wom- the young generation, whereas the an I know, at least the greatest representatives of the old genera- of the recorded and known (who tion are presented with drastic fea- can single out all the unnoticed!). tures, and the author passes into The tragedy of the awakened, in- trivial exaggerations. The character telligent, talented women in our of Mrs Majstorović is one-dimen- south, who with their weight and sional and testifies to a complete gloom remind only of the trage- lack of the author’s empathy with dy of the world-renowned writer the position of a woman writer in Victoria Benedictsson” (Marković interwar Croatian society. 1926, 608–609). She recognizes a duality in her personality: the joy Kveder’s life in obituaries of life and a tendency towards anx- iety, pessimism – black and white At the time of Zofka Kveder’s threads intertwined in her life and death, several short notes and work. When she remembers Kve- many long obituaries were pub- der, she writes that Kveder was lished in newspapers. In this ar- a world unto herself, a temper- ticle, we will focus, due to spatial amental, strong, healthy soul, a limitations, on the obituaries pub- true mountain nature, she knew lished in Serbian newspapers. The how to laugh with that cheerful, most extensive one was written by open laugh when her eyes shine Zdenka Marković (1884–1974), a and gleam, she knew how to enjoy writer, literary historian and friend the beauty of the world. But there of Zofka Kveder’s, for the maga- was also a deep-rooted tragedy in zine Srpski književni glasnik [Serbi- it (Marković 1926, 608-609). Zden- an Literary Herald]. Her record is ka Marković also points out her a personal writing that delves into diligence and collection of materi- the writer’s personality and deter- als for work at every step and her mines whether her life is related deep social sense: she took care of to a woman’s position in society school children on the outskirts of and whether the writer’s charac- the city, maids, workers. She also ter was such that it brought her to notes that no one has put in as a tragic end. She did not want to much work as she has. The con- give an account of Kveder’s work clusion of the obituary is personal as it was still too close for her to and poetic: Zofka Kveder died and write about it unencumbered, but realized the beauty of death and she just wanted to capture her still pain, as she once knew the beauty warm soul, the exact contours of of life and youth. The dark in her her personality. For Zdenka Mark- beat the light (Marković 1926, 612- ović, Zofka Kveder was “one of the 613) smartest, most unhappy women among us”, her life and death are Defiant Trajectories 81

Minka Govekar also wrote a com- journalistic articles, but also liter- memorative article for the “Serbi- ary texts, shows that biographers an sisters” and published it in the did not write about certain views magazine Žena i svet [Woman and and events. Her suicide attempts the World]. In it, she presented and Jelovšek’s extramarital rela- the life and work of Zofka Kveder tions remain unthematized. Na- and pointed out her Yugoslavness: tascha Vittorelli (2004, 2007) was “Serbian women will be especially the first to point out Zofka Kve- interested in the fact that Zofka der’s anti-Semitism, which she suffered a lot during and after the discovered in literary texts (e.g., war because of her idealistic and in the novel Hanka, 1917) and in ardent desire for closer unification. journalistic articles (Jugoslavenke i Due to her open ‘Serbophilism’, židovsko pitanje [Yugoslav Women Croatian separatist newspapers and the Jewish Question]). Vittorelli inhumanly attacked, ridiculed and also drew attention to the writer’s caricatured her. However, they did indignation, written in an unsent not criticize her literary works, but letter, preserved in her legacy, to ruthlessly shamed her as a wom- the editor of the satirical news- an, a mother, and a wife” (Govekar paper Koprive [Nettles] who pub- 1927a, 8). lished a caricature which depicted Zofka Kveder as a Jewish seller of In Učitelj [Teacher], the obitu- articles in the market. Vittorelli ary was published by Ida Runja- states that Zofka Kveder’s hus- nin, who presented the writer’s life band, Juraj Demetrović, made the and work, adding a very sensitive editor of the newspaper resign. memory of the writer: “Her en- Moreover, the author of the pam- thusiasm for creating great, noble phlet against Kveder, published in works – her sacrifice, kindness, Koprive, lost his job as a professor sincerity, openness attracted me at the Zagreb grammar school (Vit- strongly, and I felt how her con- torelli 2007, 61). These activities do vincing words, stories lift me above not place Zofka Kveder in the light this valley of tears, full of troubles, in which her biographers observe misery, human malice, upwards her as she reveals herself to us as through the whitish clouds of the a self-satisfied and vengeful wom- summer evening, to the stars – to an who took advantage of the po- Nirvana” (Runjanin 1926-1927, sition of the stronger (in this case 476). the wife of an important politician in the Yugoslav government of the Conclusion time) over the weaker. At the end A comparison of Zofka Kveder’s of the chapter on Zofka Kveder, trajectory and her views, as can Vittorelli argues that she acted as be reconstructed from her letters, a projection surface and can be 82 located at the intersections of di- tive, spiritual and emotional hori- verse and meaningful discourses: zon also tells us something about in the area of ​​tension between the context of the first wave of women’s emancipation and social- modern feminists who wanted to ism, patriotic, even nationalistic “have it all”: a successful, profes- Yugoslavism and anti-Semitism, sional life and a happy family, but and all of this made Zofka Kveder who also had to learn in the end so incredibly attractive (Vittorelli that many obstacles were simply 2004, 64). too formidable, the bar simply too high. In spite of all such obstacles Diverse attempts at present- and setbacks, however, her sto- ing Zofka Kveder as a cultural icon ry – the story of the foremother of the South Slavic space opens of today’s (emancipated) women up various questions – about the who are often not prepared to ways of glorifying the author’s role compromise – is still inspiring, as in different literary systems and current research on her life and concealing the truth about certain work demonstrates. Her life story characteristics that were incon- also carries a vital message about sistent with the positive image of the role and importance of female Kveder as a feminist role-model friendship in forming the feminist for younger generations. It seems consciousness, and about achiev- that the biographical contributions ing success in a society that is not written later stemmed mainly from favourably inclined towards those the image of Kveder as a writer who try to transcend boundaries. and a feminist due to the need to But it also reveals the strength of identify the figure of a strong and a deeply rooted paradigm – that successful writer and feminist, on a woman has to be accomplished whom it was possible to build a in all she does in order to truly see tradition parallel to the dominant herself as a successful person. In male and patriarchal discourse of other words, despite her emanci- Slovenian (literary) history. These pated convictions and actions, her strategies testify to both the pos- accomplishments in a number of itive, ambitious aspirations and different spheres, she still insisted, problematic contradictions in- at least in her marriage with Deme- volved in constructing early femi- trović, that it was best for a woman nist icons and role models. to be married and enjoy the pro- tection of her husband. Naturally, For Kveder, the modern eman- this view is certainly problematic cipatory values and goals of wom- for her feminist successors; how- en were not merely empty phras- ever, it serves as a reminder that es; throughout her lifetime she traditional gender roles are very worked devotedly to realize these complex. A complete break with goals. Analyzing Kveder’s cogni- Defiant Trajectories 83 them is not simply a matter of intel- Works cited lectual choice, but also demands a twist, a leap perhaps, in one’s emo- Cankar, Ivan. Zbrano delo. Ljublja- tional and mental development. na, Državna založba Slovenije, 1974. Throughout her life – and this Cesarec, August. Bjegunci. Zagreb, we can conclude from her person- Zora, 1972. al documents and literary works Govekar, Minka. »Зофка Кведер – Kveder sought out love: the love Деметровић«. Жена и свет, 21. janu- of her parents, her lovers, her chil- ar 1927a. dren and friends. She remained Govekar, Minka. »Zofka Kved- uncompromising until the end: er-Demetrovićeva. Ženski svet, 1927b, once she no longer enjoyed her vol. 5, no. 3, pp. 65–69. husband’s love, no other love could fill the emptiness that divorce Hásková, Zdenka. Cestou. Praga, Politika, 1920. brought her. So, ultimately, her story serves as a testament to the Hásková, Zdenka. »Jihoslovanské power of feminism, which helped přátelství«. Československ. Republiká, her win recognition as a first-rate vol. 244, no. 332, 1923, pp. 1–2. writer and intellectual; but it also Jelovšek, Vladimir. Simfonije. Za- reveals the fact that every individ- greb, 1898. ual is unique. Her encounters with Jensterle Doležal, Alenka. “The feminism were different from what Genealogy of the 20th Century South they were like for her friends be- Slavonic Novel: Zofka Kveder and Julka cause her life story, emotional ho- Chlapec-Djordjević.” Knjženstvo vol. 6., rizon, and historical context were no.6, 2016, http://www.knjizenstvo. different. By the same token, how- rs/sr/casopisi/2016/zenska-knjizev- ever, this does nothing to diminish nost-i-kultura/genealogija-u-juznoslov- the importance of feminism in and enskom-romanu-20-veka-zofka-kved- er-i-julka-hlapec-djordjevic. Accessed for her life. 28 July 2020. On the contrary, her story Joseph T. O’Connell and Kathleen proves once more that feminism M. O’Connell: Introduction: Rabin- is multifaceted and full of different dranath Tagore as ‘Cultural Icon’. Uni- perspectives, which is why she has versity of Toronto Quarterly, 2008, vol. been chosen to represent Sloveni- 77, no. 4, pp. 961-970. an women writers on the Cultural Kveder, Zofka, Jugoslavenke i židovs- Route. ko pitanje. Jugoslavenska žena 1919, vol. 3, no. 3, pp. 107-116). Machar, Josef Svatopluk. »Případ pani Žofky«. Čas, vol. 1, No. 3, 1905, pp. 44–45. 84

Marković, Zdenka. 1926. »Зофка gung um 1900. Über Triest nach Za- Кведер«. Српски књижевни гласник greb. Wien: Löcker, 2007. 25 (19), pp. 608–613.

Mihurko Poniž, Katja. Kveder, Zof- Photo credits ka. A biographical dictionary of women’s movements and feminisms in Central, National and university library Eastern, and South Eastern Europe: 19th Ljubljana / Public domain. and 20th centuries, edited by Francisca de Haan, Krasimira Daskalova, Anna Loutfi. Budapest; New York, CEU Press/Central European University Press, 2006, pp. 282-285. Mihurko Poniž, Katja & Parente Čapková, Viola. “The new women from the margins.” Interlitteraria. 2015, vol. 20, no. 2, pp. 184-198. Mihurko Poniž, Katja. “The reflec- tions of feminist ideas in novels and short stories by Slovenian women writers”. Poznańskie Studia Slawisty- czne. vol. 6, no. 11, 2016, pp. 143-156. Orožen, Božena. “Starši in otroci v spisih Zofke Kvedrove.” Jezik in slovst- vo, vol 28, no. 7/8, 1983, pp. 273-278. Runjanin, Ida, 1926-1927. Zof- ka Kveder Demetrović. Učitelj, 7(6), 476–478. Tausk, Martha. Fernambuk und an- deres. Zurich, Verlag Genossenschafts- buchhandlung, 1930. pp. 3-22. Vittorelli, Natascha: »Verschwie- gen, verharmlost, entschuldigt: Antisemitismus in Zofka Kveders Briefroman Hanka.« Die Offenlegung stereotypen Bilder. Herausforderung Osteuropa, edited by Thede Kahl, Elis- abeth Vyslonzi in Alois Woldan. Wien, München 2004, pp. 176–193. Vittorelli, Natascha. Frauenbewe- About the authors 86

EKATERINA ARTEMYUK, leading the COST (European Cooperation guidance counsellor, Centre of in the field of Science and Techni- Slavic Cultures, Moscow Office of cal Research) Action IS 0901 “Wom- the Forum of Slavic Cultures, Rus- en Writers in History: Toward a sian State Library for Foreign Liter- New Understanding of European ature. Literary Culture” since 2009 and a member of its core group (www. Teacher-psychologist, local histori- costwwih.net) since 2011. She is an, tour guide. Area of scientific in- the director of the national pro- terests: early 20th-century female ject Кnjiženstvo – Theory and His- Slavic writers. tory of Women’s Writing in Serbian until 1915 (www.knjizenstvo.rs) The author of more than 20 scien- and the editor-in-chief of Knjižen- tific articles related to the phenom- stvo, A Journal in Literature, Gender enon of female leadership. Winner and Culture (www.knjizenstvo.rs/ of the Russian Federation Presi- magazine.php). She has also been dent’s Competition “for the Best a member of John Updike Society Student Scientific Paper” (2003) since its founding, one of the ed- and winner of the E. R. Dashkova itors of John Updike Review since award “for High Achievements by a 2010, and one of the JUS directors Woman in Science” (2004). An ac- since 2015. She has published sev- tive participant in local history re- en academic books. The books she search concerning Troitse-Lutikov edited, independently or in coop- monastery (Kaluga region) and a eration, within the Knjiženstvo pro- participant in voluntary work with ject can be found at the link http:// single elderly handicapped per- www.knjizenstvo.rs/sr/izdanja. sons.

MAŠA GRDEŠIĆ, born 1979 in Za- BILJANA DOJČINOVIĆ, PhD, teach- greb, is assistant professor at the es at the Department of Compar- Department of Comparative Lit- ative Literature and Theory of erature, Faculty of Humanities Literature, Faculty of Philology, and Social Sciences, University of University of Belgrade in Serbia. Zagreb, Croatia. She graduated in She was one of the founders of Comparative Literature and Croa- the Women’s Studies Center in Bel- tian Language and Literature and grade, as well as the Indoc Center obtained her PhD at the Univer- in the Association for Women’s In- sity of Zagreb in 2003. She is the itiative. Between 2002 and 2008, author of three books in Croatian she was the editor-in-chief of Gene- (Cosmopolitics. Cultural studies, ro, a Serbian journal of feminist Feminism, and Women’s Magazines, theory. She has been a member 2013; Introduction to Narratology, of the Management Committee of Defiant Trajectories 87

2015; The Pitfalls of being Polite. Es- structing Femininity in Slovene Pub- says on Feminism and Popular Cul- lic Discourse 1848-1902; Written ture, 2020) and co-editor of seven with her Pen: Early Slovene Women proceedings from the scientific Writers breaking with the Paradigm conference “Marija Jurić Zagorka – of the National Literature; A Liter- life, work, heritage”. She is one of ary Creator in the Eyes of the Other: the founders and editors of “Muf”, Studies on Reception, Literary Con- a Croatian feminist website (2014- tacts and Biographical Discourse) 2018). Her research areas are: nar- and the editor of the Collected rative theory, feminist theory and Works of Zofka Kveder (five volumes cultural studies. [email protected]. have been published so far). She is active in international scientific projects. Her research areas are: feminist literary studies, gender EMILIA KOLINKO, PhD, holds a re- studies, digital humanities, Slo- search position within Archiwum vene drama, Slovene-German liter- Kobiet (Women’s Archive) at the ary contacts, and the history of the Instytut Badań Literackich of the Slovene women’s movement. kat- Polish Academy of Sciences. She [email protected]. has edited two volumes of nine- teenth-century women’s “ego-doc- uments”: Helena z Wolskich Kru- kowiecka, Dziennik 1831–1833, KATARZYNA NADANA - Warszawa 2016; Anna Moszyńs- SOKOŁOWSKA, PhD – literary his- ka, Listy z Pirny 1850, Warszawa torian, literary critic, lecturer in 2018. Her interests lie in archival gender studies, graduate of the theory and practice. Faculty of Polish Studies at the University of Warsaw. She re- ceived her PhD degree in 2008 on the basis of the dissertation “The KATJA MIHURKO PONIŽ, born problem of religion in Polish dia- in 1972 in Maribor, is employed ries: Stanisław Brzozowski, Karol at the University of Nova Gorica, Ludwik Koniński, Henryk Elzen- where she teaches Slovenian lit- berg” published in Polish in 2012. erature and gender studies at the Member of the interdisciplinary Faculty of Humanities and works team of the Women’s Archive at as a researcher at the Research the Institute of Literary Research Centre for Humanities. She is the of the Polish Academy of Sciences, author of five scientific Sloveni- and since 2015 assistant profes- an monographs (Boldly Different: Zofka Kveder and Images of Femi- sor at IBL PAN. Her main areas of scientific interest are feminist criti- ninity; Labyrinths of Love in Slovene Literature from the Romantic Era to cism, autobiographies, and George Sand. World War II; Eve’s Daughters: Con- 88

KSENIJA RAKOČEVIĆ, born in MONIKA RUDAŚ-GRODZKA, Pro- 1991, is a PhD student in the field fessor at IBL PAN, historian of ide- of literary studies. She is the au- as, literary historian of the 19th and thor of “Space in Montenegrin lit- 20th centuries, she presently also erature: a case study of three nov- deals with women’s spirituality. els – ‘Lelejska gora’ (Mihailo Lalić), She is the head of the Women’s ‘Mrtvo duboko’ (Čedo Vuković), Archive of the Polish Academy of and ‘Monigreni’ (Jevrem Brković)”. Sciences. She established two im- She is the winner of a prestigious prints of IBL PAN Publishing: Lupa scholarship for excellence in PhD obscura and Archiwum kobiet. studies, funded by the Montene- Documents. She published books grin Government, for the thesis Make ideas sing. Platonic motifs in “Women in Montenegro until the the life and works of Adam Mickiew- end of the 16th century through icz in Vilnius-Kaunas period and Slav the prism of history, mythology Sphinx and Polish mummy. In 2018, and emotion”. As a researcher, she she published Letters from prison. was a guest researcher at the Croa- Bronisława Waligórska, 1886. tian Academy of Sciences and Arts (HAZU) within the Centre for the Study of Emotions in Cross-Cultur- al Exchange. The same scholarship also envisages a study stay at the University of Perth, Australia. She is the secretary of the internation- al conference “Njegoš Days”. She is the editor of the Kotor Circle Art Festival. She is an expert advisor at the International Podgorica Book Fair. She was the editor of the fes- tival of feminist reflection held in Kotor in 2017 and 2018, and, as a lecturer at the School of Science, she gave lectures related to the feminist approach to literary texts of the Montenegrin literary canon. In the NGO LGBT Forum Progress, she runs queer and lesbian cul- ture programs. Fields of interest: 20th-century literature, feminist theory, emotion theory, Montene- grin literature. Index of personal names 90

A Chukovsky, Korney 49 Crnojević, Đurađ 29 Adamovich, George 56 Czabanowska-Wróbel, Anna 45 Ahmed Khan 48 Akhmatova, Anna (Ахматова, D Анна) 8, 46–51, 57 Aldanov, Mark 56 Dashkova, Ekaterina Romanovna Alexy II (Patriarch of Moscow) 54 86 Andersen, Hans Christian 16, 43 Daskalova, Krasimira 84 Armstrong, Nancy 7 Demeter, Dimitrija 16 Artemyuk, Ekaterina 5, 8, 46, 86 Demetrović, Juraj 75, 81, 82 Detoni Dujmić, Dunja 13, 17–19, B 21 Dickens, Charles 43 Banašević, Nikola 29 Dimitrijević, Jelena J. Bečanović Nikolić, Zorica 70 (Димитријевић, Јелена Ј.) 5, 9, Benedictsson, Victoria 80 58–70 Berdyaev, Nikolai 56 Dimitrijević, Jovan 60, 68 Bernatskaya, Maria 52 Dojčinović, Biljana (Дојчиновић, Bernatskiy, Nikolai 54 Биљана) 1, 3, 5, 9, 58, 61–63, 70, Białek, Józef Zbigniew 42 86 Blehova Čelebić, Lenka 24, 31 Donadini, Ulderiko 17 Blessed Osanna (of Cattaro) 27 Dostoyevsky, Fyodor 55 Blok, Alexander 56 Dotlić, Luka 29 Bošković, Vladimir 70 Dujić, Lidija 13, 21 Bourdieu, Pierre 12 Đurđević, Isidor (Ђурђевић, Brešić, Vinko 21 Исидор) 63 Brković, Jevrem 88 Đurić, Vladimir 70 Brlić-Mažuranić, Ivana 5, 8, 10–13, 16–18, 20, 21, 42, 45 E Brlić, Vatroslav 16 Bryusov, Valery 52 Efron, Ariadne 52–54 Brzozowski, Stanisław 87 Efron, Georgy (Эфрон, Георгий) Bullman, Beatrice 38 53, 54, 57 Bunin, Ivan 53, 56 Efron, Irina 52 Burnett, Frances 43 Efron, Sergei 52, 53 Efron, Yakov 52 C Elzenberg, Henryk 87 Erdödy, Ivan 14 Čale Feldman, Lada 19, 21 Eysteinsson, Astradur 12 Cankar, Ivan 76, 83 Cesarec, August 79, 83 Chlapec-Đorđević, Julka 78, 83 Defiant Trajectories 91

F Hitler, Adolf 49 Hypatia 34, 35 Faber-Chojnacka, Anna 42 Faderman, Lillian 35, 45 I Felski, Rita 13, 19, 20, 21 Ivanov, George 56 Feodorovna, Maria (Empress of Russia) 25, 26 J Fidowicz, Alicja 42, 45 Fitzgerald, Francis Scott 66–68, 70 Jakobović-Fribec, Slavica 13, 14, Flagg, Katharine 65, 70 17, 21 Frazer, James George 38 Jakšić, Lujza 62 James, Henry 64 G Jarowiecki, Jerzy 42 Jelovšek, Marija 75 Gabe, Dora 42 Jelovšek, Mira 75 Gesemann, Gerhard (Gezeman, Jelovšek, Vladimir 75, 77, 78, 81, 83 Gerhard) 23, 25, 28, 31 Jelovšek, Vladimira 75 Gilbert, Sandra 17, 19, 21 Jensterle-Doležalová, Alenka 78, Gippius, Nikolai 54 83 Gippius, Zinaida 8, 46, 47, 53–57 Jesus (Christ) 27 Gogol, Nikolay 55 Jevtić, Borivoje 64 Góra, Barbara 42 Jovanović, Jovan Zmaj 30 Gorenko, Andrey 48 Jurić Zagorka, Marija 5, 8, 10–21, Govekar, Fran 78 87 Govekar, Minka 78, 79, 81, 83 Grdešić, Maša 1, 3, 5, 8, 10, 15, 21, K 86 Grgić, Kristina 11, 12, 19, 21 Kahl, Thede 84 Grimm Brothers (Jacob & Wilhelm) Karadžić, Vuk Stefanović 30 43 Kazakova, Anastasia 57 Gubar, Susan 17, 19, 21 Kazmierski, Marek 37, 44 Gumilyov, Lev 49 Khodasevic, Vladislav 53, 56 Gumilyov, Nikolay 49, 52 Kirillina, Tatiana (Кириллина, Gurevich, Samuil (Гуревич, Татьяна) 54, 57 Самуил) 57 Klinger, Krzysztof 45 Koch, Magdalena 61–63, 70 H Kolinko, Emilia 5, 8, 32, 87 Koniński, Karol Ludwik 87 Haan, Francisca de 84 Konopnicka, Helena 35, 41 Hásková, Zdenka 78, 83 Konopnicka, Maria 5, 8, 32–45 Héderváry, Khuen 14 Konopnicki, Jaroslaw 34 Hergešić, Ivo 15 Košutić, Radovan 42 92

Korkina Elena (Коркина, Елена) Minakowski, Marek Jerzy 52, 57 53, 57 Misiak, Iwona 44, 45 Kotowska, Marta 45 Mniszek, Marina 52 Kravar, Zoran 12, 21 Modigliani, Amedeo 49, 50 Krukowiecka, Helena 87 Mole, Vojislav 42 Kuliczkowska, Krystyna 43, 45 Montgomery, Lucy Maud 43 Kuraev, Andrey (Кураев, Андрей) Moszyńska, Anna 87 54, 57 Muser, Erna 74 Kveder, Zofka 5, 9, 72–84, 87

L N

Lacan, Jacques 35 Nadana-Sokolowska, Katarzyna 5, Lalić, Mihailo 88 8, 32, 33, 45, 87 Lasić, Stanko 15, 17, 21 Nemec, Krešimir 11–13, 15, 16, 21 Ławski, Jarosław 34, 45 Ledokhovskaya, Marianna 52 O Lenartowicz, Teofil 44 Loutfi, Anna 84 O’Connell, Joseph 73, 83 Luković, Don Niko 27, 28, 31 O’Connell, Kathleen 73, 83 Orožen, Božena 76, 84 M P Machar, Josef Svatopluk 78, 83 Magnone, Lena 33, 35, 36, 41, 45 Parente Čapková, Viola 77, 84 Main, Maria 51 Pasternak, Boris (Пастернак, Mandelstam, Osip 56 Борис) 53, 57 Mann, Thomas 39, 40, 64 Peković, Slobodanka (Пековић, Marković, Zdenka 80, 84 Слободанка) 68, 70 Mary (Mother of God) 27 Pergolesi, Giovanni Battista 36, 37 Maternová, Pavla 42 Petrović, Goran 64, 65, 67, 70 Mažuranić (née Demeter), Alek- Petrović, Nikola I Njegoš 25, 26, 29 sandra 16 Petrović, Petar II Njegoš 29, 88 Mažuranić, Ivan 16 Petrov-Vodkin, Kuzma 57 Mažuranić, Vladimir 16 Plato 39, 40, 45, 88 Merezhkovsky, Dmitry 53, 55–57 Polonsky, Yakov 55 Michelangelo 36 Prijatelj, Ivan 42 Mickiewicz, Adam 38, 88 Punin, Nikolay 49 Mihurko Poniž, Katja 1, 3, 5, 9, 72, Pushkin, Alexander 51, 55 75–77, 84, 87 Pytlinska, Laura 35 Milinković, Jelena (Милинковић, Јелена) 70 Defiant Trajectories 93

R Марина) 8, 46, 47, 51–54, 57 Tsvetaev, Ivan 51 Radanović, Anita 30, 31 Rakočević, Ksenija 5, 8, 22, 88 U Rauch, Geza 14 Reba Kulauzov, Jovana 61, 70 Updike, John 86 Régnier, Henri de 29 Rudaś-Grodzka, Monika 5, 8, 32, V 38, 45, 88 Runjanin, Ida 81, 84 Veković, Divna 5, 8, 22, 28–31 Vicković, Jelena 25 S Vyslonzi, Elisabeth 84 Vittorelli, Natascha 81, 82, 84 Saint Nicholas 27 Voloshin, Maximilian 52 Saint Ursula Ledóchowska 52 Vuković, Čedo 88 Salnikova, Natalya 57 Sand, George 43, 87 W Sappho 61 Seferović, Lazar 25, 31 Waligórska, Bronisława 88 Shevelenko, Irina (Шевеленко, Wasilkowska (née Turska), Scho- Ирина) 53, 57 lastyka 34 Shileyko, Vladimir 49 Wasilkowski, Jozef 34 Shumov, Pyotr Ivanovich 57 Woldan, Alois 84 Sitalova, Anastasia (Ситалова, Woolf, Virginia 7, 39, 40, 45 Анастасия) 49, 57 Sklevicky, Lidija 17, 21 Y Socrates 39 Stachiewicz, Piotr 43 Yesenin, Sergei 56 Staff, Leopold 40 Stanley, Liz 79 Z Stogova, Inna 48 Szczuka, Kazimiera 40, 41, 45 Zima, Dubravka 13, 16–18, 21 Živanović, Đorđe 42 T Zwolski, Edward 45

Tagore, Rabindranath 83 Tausk, Martha 79, 84 Tkalčević, Adolfo Veber 42 Tripplin, Aniela 36 Tropovska, Maria 42 Tsvetaeva, Anastasia 51 Tsvetaeva, Marina (Цветаева, 94

Defiant Trajectories: Mapping out Slavic Women Writers Route

Published by and Cultural Tourist Association International Foundation – Women Writers Route Forum of Slavic Cultures Represented by Represented by Katja Mihurko Poniž Andreja Rihter

Edited by Katja Mihurko Poniž, Biljana Dojčinović, Maša Grdešić Texts by: Maša Grdešić, Ksenija Rakočević, Monika Rudaś-Grodzka Katarzyna Nadana-Sokolowska, Emilia Kolinko, Ekaterina Artemyuk Biljana Dojčinović, Katja Mihurko Poniž Proofread and technically edited by Goran Petrović Copyedited by Jeff Bickert Reviewed by Ljudmil Dimitrov, Alenka Jensterle Doležal Design and pagesetting Matija Kovač, zgradbazamisli This work is licnesed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

First electronic edition Ljubljana, Slovenia, 2021

The publication is available free of charge at: https://www.fsk.si/partnerships/women-writers-route/ Defiant Trajectories 95

Defiant Trajectories: Mapping out Slavic Women Writers Route

Published by Cultural Tourist Association Women Writers Route Represented by Katja Mihurko Poniž

Edited by Katja Mihurko Poniž, Biljana Dojčinović, Maša Grdešić Texts by: Maša Grdešić, Ksenija Rakočević, Monika Rudaś-Grodzka Katarzyna Nadana-Sokolowska, Emilia Kolinko, Ekaterina Artemyuk Biljana Dojčinović, Katja Mihurko Poniž Proofread and technically edited by Goran Petrović Copyedited by Jeff Bickert Reviewed by Ljudmil Dimitrov, Alenka Jensterle Doležal Design and pagesetting Matija Kovač, zgradbazamisli This work is licnesed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

First electronic edition Ljubljana, Slovenia, 2021

The publication is available free of charge at: https://www.fsk.si/partnerships/women-writers-route/ “Defiant Trajectories: Mapping out “Defiant Trajectories: Mapping out Slavic Women Writers Routes” is an im- Slavic Women Writers Routes” is the first portant contribution to feminist liter- comparative attempt to trace the pe- ary and historical research on gender culiarities of women’s worldview, men- in Europe. Six studies in the anthology tality, existential alternatives and nar- illuminate the literary lives and cultur- rative about themselves as expressed al work of leading women writers and in the works of Slavic women writers. intellectuals in Slavic literature during Although it highlights (only) emblem- the crucial period of the fin de siècle atic representatives of women’s lit- and the first half of the twentieth cen- erature from Montenegro, Poland, tury. The focus is on important female Serbia, Croatia, Russia, and Slovenia figures as well as their shaping of liter- in the 20th century, the collection de- ary and other identities. During this pe- velops an open structure/paradigm riod, a number of new women writers that can be filled and stimulates schol- appeared in Slavic literatures, as well ars to work out the overall state and as in other European cultures, with a functioning of a parallel Slavic (and not completely new poetics and different only) literary canon. conceptions of the world and of writ- ing in a patriarchal context. Reviews of their work and analysis of their literary Professor Ljudmil Dimitrov, PhD output show that the authors sought new paths in both real and intellectual Department of Russian Literature geography. The studies in the volume Defiant Trajectories: Mapping out Slavic Faculty of Slavic Studies, Sofia University Women Writers Routes bring us closer “St. Kliment Ohridski” to the individual personalities of these authors and their work in an in-depth and interesting way, using literary-his- torical, literary-feminist, and cultural studies methods to paint pictures of leading female figures in a particular space and time. The studies also have a comparative character.

Associate Professor Alenka Jensterle-Doležal, PhD

Department of South Slavonic and Balkan Studies

Faculty of Arts, Charles University