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).