Croatian War Fiction Detachment and Personal Experience1 Jurica Pavi�i� There is probably no expression that is as untrue as inter arma musae silent. War is an extremely distorted social condition and has always provided an inexhaust- ible supply of themes, destinies, motives and images for the art of story telling. War is an extreme condition, a time when, in the words of Jan Kott, 'history has broken loose from its chain', and when a society nervously turns to fiction to tame history, to classify and tidy it up, to verify it against narrative, aesthetic parameters. War is also a time when literature, especially narrative prose, is faced with the unspeakable proximity of ethnic cleansing, slaughter, death camps, rape, fire, all kinds of cruelty and vice, accumulated hatred and material and spiritual damage that will not heal for decades, and when it must quickly redefine its poetic principles and values. We cannot avoid considering the thought expressed in Bertold Brecht's verses, that in terrible times 'it is almost a crime to talk about trees because it means to be silent about atrocity'. Of course it is not a crime to 'talk about trees', but in the conditions it is unexpected, an act of rejection. The war will scar every work of fiction: either through its absence, or its presence. Reality is steeped in such horror that it is impossible to tame and order it: the channel of communication is simply too restricted for the enormity and the intensity of horror. Croatian writers are faced with the problem of how to express in literature what they have gone through. First of all, should writers try to express it at all? Or to be more exact, should they try to do so now? The well-known Croatian historical and political prose writer Nedeljko Fabrio at first suggested holding back from the topic for a time, his reason being that the ethically black-and-whiteness of this war is only likely to produce bad prose. The Split film director Ivan Martinac said that no good film could be made about Vukovar for at least ten years. And have writers followed this course? It seems not. Various aspects of wartime life in Croatia have been written about, and although this list does not pretend to be complete, it includes the novels Summer War Diary by Vladimir Stojsavljevi6l, The Angel of My War and llights of the Dying Town by Bernard Jan, Wolf Hunger by Marija Paprašarovska4, and the short novel or long story Dancing on Ashes by Neda Miranda Bla?evié. Two television plays have been 1. This articleis a revisedversion of an articleearlier published in the first issueof Erasmus, ErasmusGuild, Zagreb, April 1993. 2. VladimirStojsavljevid 97, iani dnevnikrata (SummerWar Diary), Ital Merkur,Zagreb, 1991 3. BernardJan, Andjeomog rata (7heAngel of My War),Zagreb, 1992 and Svjetlaw?dnieeg grada (TheLights of the DyingTown), Nakladni zavod Matice hrvatske, Zagreb, 1993. 4. MarijaPaprašarovska, Vuqa glad (Wolf Hunger),August Šenoa, Zagreb, 1992 104 made, both directed by Eduard Galid: The Lane of Three Roses', based on a newspaper story by Ivan Aralica, and fagua?. Oja Kodar, a well-known sculptress and former wife of Orson Welles, wrote the script for and directed the feature-length film The Time For', which was an Italian co-production. Finally, there are many newspaper stories and other journalistic writing that are partly fictional, written both by writers and journalists of all generations. Perhaps this is where we should start. Croatian journalism was better prepared for the challenge of war than literature. This is partly understandable: by definition journalism reacts faster, more directly. The reason also lies in conditions in Croatian publishing, where the professional writer, the writer with a contract, even everyday prose-writing as a craft are, to put it mildly, rare. Another reason may be found in the tendency of Croatian journalists to be circumstantial, to emphasize narration and parable rather than reflective writing. Then too, short forms are better suited to the reality of war's senselessness, and to the fragmentary and disjointed sequence of unconnected impressions. Croatian short war stories, especially those published in periodicals, have one more special feature. Unlike novels and television plays, they were written in the early phase of the war as the result of the initial shock and confusion. They are centred around the hero's amazement that yesterday's neighbour could have taken up arms against the Croats. The strong presence of this theme among politically and generadonally diverse writers shows that the Croatian intelligentsia did not anticipate war. They may have had no illusions about the politically inspired 'brotherhood and unity', but they seem to have had them about its most down-to-earth manifestation: faith that neighbours, relatives and fellow countrymen will not unsheathe the knife against each other, burn down each other's houses and steal each other's television sets and curtains. This theme is best expressed in two short stories by Neda Miranda Bla?evi?, published in the periodicals Kalo and Forum : 'Klasi?na forma s tenkom' (Classical Form with a Tank) and 'Otmica Sabinjanke' (The Rape of the Sabine). The former takes place at the time of the war in Slovenia, making it a kind of prologue for the violence against Croatia. It describes the heroine looking out of her window at the occupying tanks and recognizing in one of them Zoran Petrovid, a spoiled son of the communist establishment she met at the seaside. In 'The Rape of the Sabine' unknown people take the heroine, a doctor from Osijek, from the air-raid shelter and across no man's land right up to the chetniks, where she realizes that they are lead by her ex-husband, now a reserve colonel and a chemik leader. 5. Sokaktriju rula (TheLane of 7hreeRoses), directed by EduardGaiiE, produced by Croatian Television,1992. 6. Jaguar, a z'v play, directedby EduardGali6, produced by CroatianTelevision 1992. 7. Vrijemeza (TheTime For), a feature-lengthfilm, directedby OjaKodar, produced by RAI3 and Jadranfilm .