Abstract
Reviewed by: Aleksandar Pavlović, University of Belgrade, Serbia
While Western European perceptions of the Balkans have drawn the attention of academics and publishers since Maria Todorova’s 1997 Imagining the Balkans onwards, much less has been written on the perceptions of this relationship from the other end. In that respect, Zoran Milutinović’s monograph Getting over Europe brings a welcome insight into the perceptions and constructions of Europe in the works of Serbian intellectuals in the interwar period.
Milutinović’s selection starts with the notion of a rift between Europe and the Balkans as experienced by Serbian early modernists. Thus, while earlier Serbian travellers ‘felt at home in London and Paris as much as in Smyrna’ (15), prior to the Great War, Serbian intellectuals, illustrated by the works of Jovan Skerlić and Isidora Sekulić (Chapter 1), looked up to Europe as the role model for modernization and Westernization. In this sense, Europe was opposed to the backward Oriental and Ottoman legacy as a more desirable framework for preserving and affirming Serbian national identity. This Westernizing proselytism weakened after the Great War when Europe itself was shown to be destructive and disintegrative. Jovan Cvijić, Vladimir Dvorniković, Miloš Djurić and others professed a broad mission of South-Slav revival as a political and cultural response to perceived European imperialism and hypocrisy (Chapter 2). Much less enthusiastic about the Serbian mentality, Bogdan Popović, Slobodan Jovanović and Jovan Dučić promoted a model of the English gentleman or the French honnête homme as a remedy for the lack of self-control and discipline observed in Serbs (Chapter 3). The crisis in Europe, according to the evangelical-prophetic works of Nikolaj Velimirović and Dimitrije Mitrinović, could be overcome only if Europe returned to its roots, that is, Faith and Christianity (Chapter 4). Milutinović demonstrates yet another form of Serbian discourse about Europe, displayed in Rastko Petrović’s travelogue Africa (Chapter 5), which is distinctly European in its racism and prejudices, but also self-Balkanistic when its author meets a noble European in Africa. The last two chapters are dedicated to the novels of Ivo Andrić, which, according to Milutinović, finally overcome the damaging dichotomies of East/West and Orient/Occident. In The Bridge over the Drina Andrić equates modernization with Europe/West and proceeds to show its creative as well as self-destructive side. In Bosnian Chronicle, Andrić finally overcomes all essentialisms by offering several contested images of Europe, Occident and Bosnia, none of which is privileged by the narrative.
Getting over Europe is a rewarding study that does not remain limited to an imagological study of conceptions of Europe in Serbian culture. Through its wider framework, it aims to offer a phenomenology of the Serbian spirit by presenting these ideas in a dialectical interplay, from the rupture between the images of Serbia and Europe to their Aufhebung in Andrić’s novels. The overall theoretical perspective is made more complex, and at moments blurred, by occasional references to de Saussure, Derrida, Weber or anyone else whom the author finds suitable when engaging with literary texts. The strongest sections in this book are those arising from Milutinović’s subtle and nuanced, at times ironical and witty textual analyses, and his grouping of elusive ideas and authors (‘dramatis personae’) into a stage-like dialogue, all of which reminds us of the virtues of nowadays somewhat marginalized literary studies.
Eloquent in handling the material he has selected, the author is less concerned with explicating his selection of texts and contextualizing their authors. The discussion thus remains confined mostly to the Serbian interwar high-culture and belles lettres, written by authors who studied and/or lived in Western Europe. If indeed the overcoming of the East/West dichotomy occurs in an exalted form in Andrić’s Bosnian Chronicle, its impact on Serbian culture at large is left unexplained. Moreover, the discussion largely disregards the vitriolic political context, in which quite a few of the dramatis personae behaved as ardent nationalists, displaying imperial, hypocritical attitudes (for which they had condemned Europe) towards their fellow Balkaners or the Jews.
In short, Serbian conceptions of Europe were as numerous, diverse and contested as the reciprocal perceptions of the Balkans by the Western Europeans of the time. Getting over Europe has succeeded in bringing them together in a productive dialogue. In addition to this, Milutinović’s captivating style and erudition will appeal to historians as well as to those from literary and cultural studies and social sciences. Finally, the book itself retains a sort of elusiveness, as it functions as an imagological study and a dialectical enquiry, while, at yet another level, it is a study of misunderstandings between Western Europe and Serbia stemming from false dichotomies and prejudices. In the latter capacity, it ultimately offers the hope and possibility of understanding arising from a subtle and non-reductive reading of the conceptions and visions that they can offer to each other.