Journal of World Literature 3 (2018) 512–523 brill.com/jwl The First Slovenian Novel and the Literary World-System Jernej Habjan Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts [email protected] Abstract The first Slovenian novel is yet to be read in a way that is both comparative and socio- logical. For while Slovenian studies treats the emergence of the Slovenian novel socio- logically but not comparatively, comparative literature studies views it comparatively yet not sociologically. This gap can be filled by the perspective of the literary world- system. Moreover, this viewpoint can subtilize the thesis of Slovenian studies that the belatedness of the Slovenian novel is part of the belatedness of the Slovenian bour- geoisie as well as the comparatist thesis that the Slovenian novel became possible only after the end of the possibility of the traditional European novel. The world-systemic approach can grasp this belatedness as a social fact that speaks less of the Slovenian novel’s essence than of the structural relations between Slovenian culture and its Euro- pean social environment. Keywords Slovenian novel – the world-system – Josip Jurčič – Walter Scott – Mikhail Bakhtin The1 first character in the first Slovenian novel is Walter Scott: Narrators have, as noted already by the famous novelist Walter Scott, the age-old right to begin their story at an inn, that is, the meeting place of 1 This article was written at the Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts in the framework of the research project “Slovene Literature and Social Changes” (J6— © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2018 | doi:10.1163/24056480-00304009Downloaded from Brill.com09/24/2021 03:54:17PM via free access the first slovenian novel and the literary world-system 513 all travelers where various characters open themselves to one another directly and freely, confirming the proverb In wine there is truth. If we then claim this right ourselves it is because we believe that our Slovenian inns and innkeepers, while bearing a much simpler appearance, are no less original than Scott’s old English ones. Jurčič 141 (my translation) This was the incipit to the first Slovenian novel, Deseti brat (TheTenth Brother). The author, Josip Jurčič, wrote the following in his notebook for 1865–1866, the period during which he wrote the novel: It is an age-old privilege of narrators to begin their story at an inn, the free rendezvous of all travelers, where various characters open themselves without ceremony and concealment, especially if the English innkeep[er] is merry, open, etc. The Slovene inn has these features – while the charac- ter of the people is diff[erent], in this respect the two are alike. Quoted in Rupel 401 (my translation) Both passages, that from the novel and that from the notebook, partake in what Mikhail Bakhtin will describe, a century later in his history of the Rabelaisian novel, as “[t]he substantial traditional link of wise and free speech with food and wine, the specific ‘truth’ of table talk” (Bakhtin Rabelais 121). But the pas- sages diverge from each other in two aspects, both of which are key for the novel form itself: only the novelistic passage introduces the first half of the statement as another’s idea, and the second half as a polemical response to it. Only the incipit to Deseti brat ascribes the first half of the statement to Walter Scott, and compares itself to him in the second half; only this version presents the statement as a series of novelistic utterances, that is, in Bakhtin’s definition, “positions of various subjects expressed in discourse” (Bakhtin Problems 183). In short, only the novelistic version of the statement is novelistic. Moreover, in this version, these utterances about how to begin a novel are placed at the beginning of a novel, even at the beginning of the first Slovenian novel, thus securing the latter right away the autoreferentiality that is expected from nov- els. 8259) and the research program “Studies in Literary History, LiteraryTheory and Methodology (P6–0024),” both of which were financed by the Slovenian Research Agency. The Slovenian- language version of the article, titled “Prvi slovenski roman in literarni svetovni-sistem,” appeared in 2014 in Slavistična revija 62(4), 569–577. Journal of World Literature 3 (2018) 512–523 Downloaded from Brill.com09/24/2021 03:54:17PM via free access 514 habjan But we should expect more from a novelistic refraction of a notebook state- ment.We should expect a third position, one that responds to the very response to Scott’s idea: an utterance that profanes the belief that “our Slovenian inns and innkeepers … are no less original than Scott’s old English ones.” This the narrator could achieve by introducing either a new utterance or an actual inn and its profaning folklore chronotope. This kind of chronotope, writes Nada Petkovska (275), remains “on the periphery of the plot,” in Deseti brat. Periph- eral as it is, the inn does contradict the narrator’s belief in the originality of Slovenian inns, but by mistake, as it were, namely as an unsuccessful novelis- tic introduction of an inn. What is hence missing is a position that contradicts the narrator’s belief within the novelistic narrative itself and thereby enables something like the realization that this belief is a case of Freudian disavowal. For the narrator’s reaction, his belief in his originality in spite of better knowl- edge, gives the incipit the structure of fetishistic disavowal. Octave Mannoni (2003) grasps this structure with the following formula: I know well, but all the same … Applied to our case, this would sound something like the following: I know well that Slovenian inns and innkeepers bear a much simpler appearance, butallthesameIbelievethattheyarenolessoriginalthanScott’soldEnglishones. The opening conflict between the knowledge that Slovenian inns lack Scott’s originality and a belief to the contrary is resolved in a compromise that retains both the knowledge and the belief, but only in the manner of I know well, but all the same … “In the conflict between the weight of the unwelcome perception and the force of … [the] counter-wish, a compromise has been reached, as is only possible under the dominance of the unconscious laws of thought – the primary processes,” reads Freud’s explanation of disavowal (“Fetishism” 154). “Disavowals of this kind occur very often and not only with fetishists,” adds Freud (“An Outline” 204). And yet we don’t tend to expect them from narrators of novels. From them we expect the third position mentioned above, profa- nation of belief. For this kind of profanation is not only able to resolve the conflict but is itself a genuine novelistic carnivalization of fetishes (including the fetishes, both well known to the novel form, of “Throne and Altar”: a panic similar to castration anxiety may be experienced by “a grown man … when the cry goes up that Throne and Altar are in danger” [Freud “Fetishism” 153]). Deseti brat knows no such profanation, and hence monologic disavowal survives not only in its incipit but also in the motto before the incipit, namely in the quote from the Slovenian poet Simon Jenko’s post-Romantic lyric cycle Obrazi (Pic- tures/Faces). Granted, this verse motto is transformed into the prose text that follows the incipit, but this is a mere formal transformation rather than a gen- uine novelistic one. The entire chapter following the incipit is indeed a prose version of the verses quoted in the motto, but a version devoid of carnivaliza- Journal of World LiteratureDownloaded from 3 (2018) Brill.com09/24/2021 512–523 03:54:17PM via free access the first slovenian novel and the literary world-system 515 tion, a version lacking the device that novels tend to employ in response to mottoes like the following: “A young hero through the grass / walks with a heavy chest. S. Jenko” (Jurčič 141; my translation). Paradoxically, a proper novelistic prosaization of Jenko’s Obrazi is to be sought in a response that is not even in prose form, namely the following: “A young hero through the grass / rides his bike real fast. S. Jenko” (Rob 7; my translation). This profanation – namely Ivan Rob’s 1938 Deseti brat, a text written two years before the first edition of Bakhtin’s above-quoted history of Rabelaisian novel – this travesty of Jurčič’s novel is the actual novel, as far as the novelization of Jenko’s Obrazi is con- cerned. Moreover, instead of disenchanting belief, the remainder of the first para- graph of the first Slovenian novel merely reproduces the structure of disavowal. The knowledge of the first sentence and the belief of the second are repeated as the knowledge of the third sentence and the belief of the fourth: It is self-evident that a Slovenian mother has yet to bear a son capa- ble of outlining our national features with the accuracy with which the said unmatchable master has presented to the world the characters of his people. Hence, the narrator of this utterly true story will not attempt to portray the merry Slovenian innkeeper Peharček, and for three rea- sons: firstly, because it is impossible to conceive of Peharček exactly as he really was; secondly, because this noteworthy man holds merely a tempo- rary, fleeting place in our story, one limited to its beginning; and thirdly, because later on we will have to weave into the story another innkeeper, one quite similar in spirit to Peharček[.] Jurčič 141 But this is not all. Between the second and the third sentence, there is no ref- erence: the second assertion of knowledge follows the first assertion of the knowledge to the contrary without admitting the contradiction.