Cvetanka Perović

FACTA UNIVERSITATIS Series: Linguistics and Literature Vol. 9, No 2, 2011, pp. 77 - 88 LOST PRESENT: BECOMING AS BEING UDC 811.163.41'373.21"18"(497.113) Cvetanka Perović Palomar College, San Marcos, California, USA E-mail: [email protected] Abstract. In this article we will discuss a particular case of "becoming" and how this human condition, under certain historical conditions, takes over the "being." As a narrative and metaphorical context, I will use sericulture (silk production), the topographical language of the Pannonia plains, and the historical wanderings of Serbs in the morning of the creation of nations. As a personal, emotional context, I will use my memories from Banat, a region in the northern Serbian province of Vojvodina. Key words: silkworm, becoming, being, Sebald, Serbian migration 1. INTRODUCTION Bombyx mori is a beautiful silkworm moth. The male dies soon after mating, and the female lays three to five hundred eggs in several days, then dies. Silkworms hatch from the eggs that have, at birth, black, velvety fur. After six to seven weeks they shed their old skin on four occasions and emerge every time whiter, larger, smoother, finally almost transparent. Redness on the throat announces the onset of metamorphosis. The caterpillar spins a fragmented web for protection of the cocoon and starts constructing an egg-shaped casing around himself out of interrupted thread a 1000 yard long. Inside the cocoon there is no air and no moisture. The silkworm sheds off one last time its skin and transforms into a nymph. For 2-3 weeks it remains in that state until the butterfly emerges. In order to collect the silk, one kills the worm/ nymph and interrupts the metamorphosis. Billions of worms/nymphs have lived only to their continued but neglected becoming phase. In this article I will discuss a particular case of "becoming" and how this human condition, under certain historical conditions, takes over the "being." As a narrative and metaphorical context, I will use sericulture (silk production), the topographical language of the Pannonia plains, and the historical wanderings of Serbs in the morning of the Submitted February 2011, accepted for publication in May 2011. 78 C. PEROVIĆ creation of nations. As a personal, emotional context, I will use my memories from Banat, a region in the northern Serbian province of Vojvodina. In Organs without Bodies - Gilles Deleuze and Consequences: Becoming versus History, Slavoj Zizek talks about the virtual state of "being": The ontological opposition between Being and Becoming which underpins Deleuze's notion of the virtual is a radical one in that its ultimate reference is pure becoming without being (as opposed to the metaphysical notion of pure being without becoming). This pure becoming is not a particular becoming OF some corporeal entity, a passage of this entity from one to another state, but a becoming-it-itself, thoroughly extracted from its corporeal base. (emphasized by the author of this article) (Zizek 2004:2) Serbs in the northern province of today's Vojvodina have been less under Turks and more under Austro-Hungarian Empire, unlike the rest of the Serbian territories. Under Viennesse governance and in co-habitation with German settlers (among others), Vo- jvodina Serbs have undergone a special treatment of becoming "more civilized" and more "(petit)-bourgeois." On the other hand, Serbs from the 17th century Kosovo, fearing the incoming Turks, fled their homes and started a major period of wandering, known as Great Serb Migra- tions, towards Turkish-free Magyar territories in Hungary.1 During those migrations "the already existing Serbian population on the territory of today's Vojvodina, wasn't consid- erably enlarged because the immigrants continued much further north (all the way to Komoran and Saint Andrei)." (Kicošev 2010:14). North of the Sava and Danube rivers, in the Hungarian Lowlands, secluded by the Carpathian mountains, lies a large plain, once called Alföld. At the beginning of the 16th century, Serbs (Rascians) who lived a very primitive, nomadic life, were fighting Swabi- ans and Magyars for dominance of the Alföld plain and the rich vales of Tisza (Theiss) and Danube. There were constant migrations of Serbs towards Hungary, but Magyars and Germans proved themselves to be better farmers in the upper land, and after the Banat was occupied, the migration stopped. In fact, the Germans and many other "settlers," followed Serbs down south to the large plains of today's Vojvodina: After the Banat had been occupied, a stop was put in the part of the country to the constant migrations of the nomad Serb goat-herds, which jeopardized the security of property. They were compelled to do regular military service, and an attempt was made to force them to settle in permanent homes. (Marczali 1910: 203) 1 Following the debacle of the Turkish forces at Vienna in 1683, the army of Western-European Alliance (Austria, Poland and Venetia) continued to drive the Turks out of the Balkan region of Podunavlje. During the Turkish counterattack of 1689/1690, it was driven back to the north on main direction Skopje-Belgrade, across the Sava and the Danube. Around 37000 Serbian families crossed the rivers with allied forces. Those were the families which took part in the war on the side of Austria, either by staging an armed uprising or in some other manner. Austrian authorities regrouped them on the Croatia-Slavonija-Hungary-Erdelj stretch. Serbs received privileges from the Roman-German Emperor Leopold I, which guaranteed them national and religious singularity and certain rights and freedoms in the Habsburg monarchy. The key person in this process was the Patriarch of Peć, Arsenije III Čarnojević. The same emperor approved of him as of the head of the newly established Orthodox church in the Monarchy in 1695. Arsenije III Čarnojević and subsequent religious leaders of Serbs in the Habsburg Monarchy had jurisdiction over all Serbs in the Habsburg Monarchy, including Serbs of Vojvodina, and Serbs of Vojvodina accepted the idea of a separate Serbian voivodeship in this area, which they managed to create in 1848). (Explanation from SANU archives). Lost Present: Becoming as Being 79 Serbs are not "good" immigrants - they are wanderers, not settlers. The large Serb migrations from the Balkans to the Pannonia Plain started in the 14th century and lasted until the end of the 18th century. People do not spend four centuries covering a distance that can be traversed in three days on horseback (some of the territory already occupied by Serbs) to immigrate. Serbs, their wives, children, and livestock have moved with the winds and flows of more ambitious and historically concerned powers (and their kings and queens), back and forth, and have settled again on their own territories. Rascians, "rasejani": dispersed, the ones who went all the way to Siberia and fought the Chinese; Thracians, believed to be Serbs in the times of Herodotus (legend again); Serbs who cherish a possibility of big space not as a political but rather a space of Serbian myth in which the purpose of wandering/migration is not the conquest of new territory but the business of the soul and perpetual reinvention. Slavoj Zizek writes: "The emergence of the New occurs when a work overcomes its historical context. And, on the opposite side, if there is a true image of fundamental ontological immobility, it is the evolutionary image of the universe as a complex network of endless transformations and developments in which plus ça change, plus ça reste le même:" (Zizek 2004:2). He (Zizek) follows by a quote from Gilles Deleuze: I became more and more aware of the possibility of distinguishing between becoming and history. It was Nietzsche who said that nothing important is ever free from a 'non- historical cloud.' /.../ What history grasps in an event is the way it's actualized in particular circumstances; the event's becoming is beyond the scope of history. /.../ Becoming isn't part of history; history amounts only to the set of preconditions, however recent, that one leaves behind in order to "become," that is, to create something new. (emphasized by the author of this article) (Deleuze 1995:170-171) * * * In the late sixties, I used to spend parts of my summer vacations in Pancevo, a small town in the region of Banat, not far from Belgrade, where my aunt lived in a tiny house on a broad suburban street of Stevan Supljikac, across the street from a shoe factory. Streets in Banat were broad and straight with concrete, chipped sidewalks. The street that they lived on had two endless rows of magnificant mulberry trees on both sides that stre- ched as far as the eye could see down the street. Most of the houses behind the trees were attached to each other. They shared walls, yards, trees, fences in an unpredictable way, and were directly bordering the sidewalks. Beyond the mulberry street, the town of Pancevo spread out and disappeared into the glittering marshes, agricultural plains, the Danube river and the small Tamish river. There was a certain grandeur in that endless flat of Banat, filled with marshes, or bare and sandy; there was also a certain majesty in its melancholy and hilless horizon. Sum- mers in Banat were hot and, because of the marshes and underground waters, mosquitoes were everywhere. The sidewalks on our street were stained with fallen mulberries, at- tracting green summer flies whose buzzzing, paired with the music from small workers'- type transistor radios, would put us to sleep for lazy afternoon naps, wrapped like worms in cotton blankets that smelled like the marsh behind the house. 80 C. PEROVIĆ Stevan Šupljikac Street in 2010 The mulberry trees provided good shade for the big windows facing the street, and their ripe, white or dark-red fruit was sweet and delicious.

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