Papers by Sonja Veselinovic
Devet decenija Dragoslava Mihailovića: zbornik radova, 2025
This paper discusses the social context surrounding the work and social relations of a salesman B... more This paper discusses the social context surrounding the work and social relations of a salesman Budislav Buda Jeremić in the play Introduction to Employment by Dragoslav Mihailović. Budimir’s perception of his job and performance in the bookselling business is relatable to the self-perception
and loss of identity of Willy Loman, the main character in Arthur Miller’s famous play Death of a Salesman. The play demonstrates how Budimir advises his young colleague, apprentice Dragi, about the skills and resourcefulness needed for the traveling salesman, not a very respectable
job, but the one that gives a man freedom to travel, organize and manage
his working hours and strategies. Buda does not accept to be identified with
his job or reduced to his vocation, whose social marginalization he also
protests. Similar to how Miller reveals the reverse of the American dream,
Mihailović displays the social and economic problems in the background
of the Yugoslav socialist propaganda of equal chances for everyone. His
depiction of characters of provincial workers lacking ambitions or initiative
is particularly striking in this latent social critique. Large print runs of the state publishing houses a repercussion of the notion of culture as a tool of
progress and the elevation of the working-class, become a commodity that
is hard to sell in an increasing consumer society. Insecure and disdained
in Yugoslav society, Budimir’s vocation is constantly paralleled with his
ambitions as a former best student of Šabac high school and his brief literary
career. The paper addresses how Mihailović problematizes the notion of
literature on several levels. In the first place, it is just another commodity
in a consumerist society, gradually losing its symbolic value to be estimated
solely by its practical use. Literature is also an integral part of humanistic
education expected to develop universal values and foster the elevation of
the whole population. Buda published a poetry collection as a young man but now disdains that early poetic ambition. On that account, literature also becomes a measure of personal failure and misunderstanding with society. Mihailović considers the role of literature in Yugoslav society in his play and perhaps even makes a metapoetic sign of his title, suggesting the obstacles that a professional writer faces in such a cultural milieu.
Film i književnost 2.0, Institut za književnost i umetnost, Beograd, 2025
LITERARY BIOPICS
From the Death of the Author to the Life-Text
In the past few decades, the flou... more LITERARY BIOPICS
From the Death of the Author to the Life-Text
In the past few decades, the flourishing of literary biographical films has underscored the need for a more in-depth consideration of the representation of authorship in cinema. The biopics centred on literary figures balance between the wish to preserve the aura and mythical tradition of exceptionally talented individuals, and the need to represent the characters as vulnerable, flawed, and relatable to the audience. The authorial figure in biographical films signifies both presence and absence: it is a self-referential embodiment of post-structuralist and postmodern crises of authorship. Despite Barthes’s and Foucault’s assertions, the author persistently returns in the form of someone’s body, voice, or a hand engaged in writing the text. The author in the film is performatively constructed, while the narrative shapes a life-text composed of facts, impressions, and cultural codes. In the second part of the paper, I analyse the representation of literary figures and the framing of
the biographical through poetic in Terence Davies’s films A Quiet Passion (2016) and Benediction (2021).
Godišnjak Filozofskog fakulteta u Novom Sadu, 2025
The paper examines the correspondence Eeji of Rada Iveković and Bogdan Bogdanović in light of epi... more The paper examines the correspondence Eeji of Rada Iveković and Bogdan Bogdanović in light of epistolary conventions and techniques, current theoretical subjects, and specific relations within the literary field. These epistolary essays point to the epistolary tradition and features such as the particularity of the I-you relation, confidentiality, the role of the reader, misunderstanding, and ellipsis. Paratexts, metatexts, wordplay, and unreliable narration consistently subvert the dominant representation of the author's authority and intention. The authors advocate for a hybrid, open text as a way of resisting „truth,“ seriousness, and the instrumentalization of literature. Given the complex relationships within the Yugoslav literary field at the time, this correspondence emphasizes that intellectuals must constantly reconsider the perspectives from which they speak and the power structures at work in literary concepts and norms.
Nasleđe, 2025
Serbian and Yugoslav author Bora Ćosić started the Rok magazine in 1969 with a group of associate... more Serbian and Yugoslav author Bora Ćosić started the Rok magazine in 1969 with a group of associates and ultimately edited and published four issues. The magazine was a part of Ćosić’s literary project of mixed media technique: it combined diverse textual and visual materials and presented itself as a conceptual artwork. It contributed significantly to the promotion of
neo-avant-garde literature and aesthetic practices, such as the OHO group, Fluxus, Yugoslav Black Wave, Vojvodinian neo-avant-garde, Mediala, and others. Using the techniques of montage, collage, and citation, the magazine emphasized the grounding of contemporary anti-institutional art in the global student and labor movement of 1968. The articles incorporated excerpts from newspaper texts and public documents relating to the political events of 1968 in Western and Eastern Europe, especially Czechoslovakia, thus encouraging readers to unmask the mechanisms of media messages created and disseminated from the hegemonic positions. On the other hand, the magazine introduced new artistic practices that undermined dominant aesthetic values, hierarchies, and representation. The authors indicated the spontaneous and manifestative effect of this aesthetic orientation, similar to the revolutionary energy.
Nasleđe, 2025
The paper discusses representations of family life, family structures, and affectivity in the nov... more The paper discusses representations of family life, family structures, and affectivity in the novel "Me, Scared?" by Slovenian author Maruša Krese. The unnamed narrators, She and He, recount their partisan experiences, pointing to the redefined gender relations in wartime conditions while also reflecting on the relationships within their traditional, patriarchal families. In the socialist post-war society, the family is reshaped under the influence of women’s emancipation and the suppression of hierarchical relations. However, the parents are supposed to subordinate personal and family interests to public goals, and the intrusive state involvement in family functioning violates the private sphere. The third narrator, their daughter, introduces an individualistic perspective of the next generation and speaks about her parents, redeeming their privacy through a discourse of love.
MARSEL PRUST: PRISUSTVA, Institut za književnost i umetnost, Beograd , 2024
La réception critique de la problématique homosexuelle dans "À la recherche du temps perdu" de Ma... more La réception critique de la problématique homosexuelle dans "À la recherche du temps perdu" de Marcel Proust est complexe depuis ses débuts, et l’homotextualité même (J. Stockinger, 1978) est souvent ignorée au profit de la favorisation des thèmes « universaux » du roman. À part quelques études importantes dans la réception précoce, le progrès
dans cette problématique est rendu possible grâce aux études des années 1980-1990, de J. E. Rivers, Eva Ahlstedt, Antoine Compagnon, Eve Sedgwick, Leo Bersani. La plupart de ces critiques part du chapitre introductif de Sodome et Gomorrhe, « Première apparition des hommes-femmes, descendants de ceux des habitants de Sodome qui furent épargnés par le feu du ciel », où Proust établit le discours canonique sur l’homosexualité dans le roman. Il sous-entend l’introduction des conceptions scientifiques et sociales régnantes sur ce phénomène, mais aussi leur questionnement graduel et détournement à travers le processus narratif. Pour cette raison, la terminologie par laquelle on introduit et désigne l’homosexualité est extrêmement importante ; nous consacrons notre analyse dans une grande mesure aux problèmes de la traduction de ces termes en langues serbe et croate.
L’objet de l’analyse sont les fragments prélevés de l’édition croate de La Recherche (U traženju izgubljena vremena / U traganju za izgubljenim vremenom, 1951-1965, 1965, 1972, 1977), traduite par Augustin Ujević et Vinko Tecilazić, ainsi que les fragments de la traduction serbe par Živojin Živojnović: U traganju za iščezlim vremenom, 1983 (seconde édition au titre changé: U traganju za minulim vremenom, 2007). Notre travail prend en considération la manière de traduire les termes-clés, tels que : inverti, inversion, hommesfemmes, gomorrhéen, les Gomorrhéennes. Nous prenons en considération également les fragments où l’homosexualité est présentée dans différents contextes : médicinal, sexuel, historique ou mythologique. Etant donné que la traduction croate fut sensiblement antérieure, à l’époque où l’homosexualité fut un tabou social et punie par la loi, Ujević en tant que traducteur de la « Première apparition… » et Tecilazić en tant que traducteur de Sodome et Gomorrhe, La Prisonnière, Albertine disparue et du Temps retrouvé, ne prêtent pas beaucoup d’attention aux nuances sémantiques dans le traitement de l’homotextualité. Živojnović tache de suivre plus conséquemment la divergence terminologique de Proust, en imitant le savant discours scientifique ; ainsi pour traduire le terme inverti, il choisit un terme de style âpre, afin de rendre plus précise la signification. Ujević approche la terminologie plus librement, souvent en la réduisant aux expressions homoseksualac/homoseksualnost, tout en évitant le terme inversion. Tecilazić suit sa trace, avec un succès changeant – à certains endroits, son approche est plus créative, et aux autres il introduit des qualifications négatives ou moqueuses, absentes du texte original. Quand il s’agit de
thématiser le lesbianisme, le vocabulaire de Proust apparait beaucoup plus fluide et se dirige vers un manque de définition, tout comme le transfert langagier qui dépend plus de la manière dont le traducteur interprète les nuances sémantiques. les traductions croate et serbe tentent de transposer l’homosexualité en entier, sans tenir compte des résistances potentielles dans la réception ou les essais des critiques à diminuer l’importance de cette problématique dans l’œuvre de Proust.
Filolog, XVI, 31, 2025
This paper presents the early reception of Marina Tsvetaeva's poetry, prose,
and essays in Yugosl... more This paper presents the early reception of Marina Tsvetaeva's poetry, prose,
and essays in Yugoslav, or more specifically, Serbian translated literature, with the intention to examine the influence of the Russian poet as an exemplary cultural figure in the works of Yugoslav women writers. As a cultural icon, Tsvetaeva is present in the literary oeuvre of Serbian writer Biljana Jovanović (1953‒1996), from her second novel, "Dogs and Others", to her last play, "A Room on the Bosphorus", where she appears as one of the characters. Presenting Tsvetaeva as a countercultural figure, Jovanović builds her authorial authority and integrity based on the example of the Russian author's poetic persona and her autobiographical writing. However, she also establishes a reciprocal relationship, paying homage to this influential poet who, during her lifetime, was deprived of adequate attention from readers and critics. This aspect is also highly relevant in the work "Marina, or About Biography" by Croatian author Irena Vrkljan (1930‒2021), especially in the frame of the reception of Tsvetaeva's autobiographical works. By juxtaposing details from Tsvetaeva's biography with her own, Vrkljan legitimizes her poetic confrontation with genre, social, and gender conventions. In both writers' works, Tsvetaeva appears as a privileged interlocutor and a desired reader, in contrast to the presumed critical reaction of the literary establishment.
Pétrus Borel dans le domaine étranger, 2023
Sonja Veselinović examine les occurrences du nom de Borel dans les textes des surréalistes serbes... more Sonja Veselinović examine les occurrences du nom de Borel dans les textes des surréalistes serbes, en particulier sous la plume de Marko Ristić, proche de Breton. S’interrogeant sur les écarts que la traduction serbe de Champavert, publiée en 1962, présente avec le texte original, elle relève
qu’ils sont le reflet d’une domination de l’esthétique réaliste dans l’ex-Yougoslavie des années 1960.
Nasleđe, 2024
In this paper, I discuss Magda Simin’s 1 972 novel Pomračenja, which introduces a taboo topic of ... more In this paper, I discuss Magda Simin’s 1 972 novel Pomračenja, which introduces a taboo topic of the Cominform period and Goli Otok prison. The novel represents Silvija, a woman who refuses to renounce her husband, arrested as ibeovac. She returns to her hometown, where Ivan,
her own and her husband’s friend and comrade, tries to help her through hardship and isolation, exposing him to suspicion and inquiry. Through several scenes of questioning the suspects, the author demonstrates the rhetoric of investigators and their identification with the power of the regime, especially emphasizing how they manipulate the discourse to exclude and isolate the suspect from the public sphere. The nonlinear narration of the novel puts the current political crisis in parallel with the protagonist’s wartime experiences and camp horrors, so he experiences them as a dual trauma. The interpretation offers new insights into questions of personal and collective identity, the representation of totalitarian system and language, and the linguistic spaces of resistance and creativity that challenge dogma and silence.
Identitet umetnice u srpskoj modernoj umetnosti : zbornik radova, 2024
Biljana Jovanović (1953–1996) was a contemporary Serbian writer whose literary work and social ac... more Biljana Jovanović (1953–1996) was a contemporary Serbian writer whose literary work and social activism were thematically and conceptually intertwined. She explored new poetic directions and relevant social issues from one book to another, maintaining a high level of subversiveness and polyphony without conforming to recognizable stylistic and ideological solutions. The reception of her literary work is somewhat paradoxical: in certain circles, she is considered a cult writer, yet her books and their influence are rarely a subject of critical or scholarly attention. Jovanović’s engagement in the struggle for human rights, freedom of speech, and in anti-war projects (such as the Civil Resistance Movement and the Flying Classroom-Workshop) and demonstrations in 1991-1992 was uncompromisingly directed against authoritarianism, nationalism, and patriarchy. This paper examines the interplay of biography, philosophical education, and literary explorations in Biljana Jovanović’s accomplishments as a cultural figure.
Primerjalna književnost, 2024
Despite their central position in the canon of detective fiction, Agatha Christie’s most famous c... more Despite their central position in the canon of detective fiction, Agatha Christie’s most famous characters, Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot, occupy an ex-centric position in their respective fictional worlds. Both sleuths can be interpreted as marginalized Others and as such challenge the normative assumptions of the society in which they live. Miss Marple’s marginalization is primarily reflected in her gender, her amateur detective work, and her marital status, while Poirot’s Otherness is implied by his foreignness, his effeminacy and his neurodivergence. Both characters can also be interpreted as asexual and analyzed as straight-passing queers. This article explores how Christie uses her detectives’ status as Other to gently challenge the era’s dominant ideas about authority, sexuality,
gender and morality. The analysis focuses primarily on the works The Murder at the Vicarage, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, “The Double Clue” and Hallowe’en Party and their film and television adaptations to examine both the textual and subtextual instances of marginalization, and the various attempts to keep the Other within the confines of normative identity.
U drugom smeru: savremeno srpsko pesništvo u 21. veku, ur. Stevan Bradić, Žarka Svirčev, Institut za književnost i umetnost, 2024
MATER, MATERICA, MATERINA: REPRESENTATIONS OF MOTHERHOOD IN THE POETRY OF CONTEMPORARY SERBIAN WO... more MATER, MATERICA, MATERINA: REPRESENTATIONS OF MOTHERHOOD IN THE POETRY OF CONTEMPORARY SERBIAN WOMEN AUTHORS
This paper endeavors to explore the theme of motherhood within the realm of contemporary Serbian poetry and contribute to the broader understanding of the cultural and artistic significance of motherhood within the Serbian poetic tradition. Starting from my previous research with Sonja Milovanović on poetry about pregnancy and childbirth, I focus
here on the works of poets who introduced the theme of motherhood as a relevant or even crucial motif of their poetry collections. By delving into a selection of representative poems of Ana Seferović and Tanja Stupar Trifunović, the study aims to discern the multifaceted portrayals and complexities of motherhood that intersect with broader sociocultural and
historical contexts. Seferović depicts the ambivalent mother figure in a patriarchal society, whose traditional gender role constraints her to protect and bond with her children. Only through her mothering experience is the speaker in Seferović’s collection Materina able to identify with and understand her female ancestors and embrace motherhood without
losing her personal, intellectual, and creative capacities. The transformative power of this theme within the poetic imagination is distinctive for the poems of Stupar Trifunović. Her poems about pregnancy, childbirth, and motherhood provide female and maternal
perspectives and try to take control of the narrative. Illustrating the transition from daughter-perspective to matrifocal discourse, she tends to explore the complex interplay between personal experiences, political upheavals, and the broader sociocultural milieu. This theme tends to become even more relevant in the works of the Serbian female poets born in the 1980s. Marija Krtinić Veckov offers a bitter critique of the dominant cultural representation of motherhood in Serbian society and demonstrates how mothering is still marked by guilt and helplessness in an aggressive, condemning environment. In her new poetry collection, Aleksandra Jovičić Đinović introduces a poignant and emotionally charged topic of pregnancy loss. Her poetic imagery, techniques, and symbols focus on transposing the experience of loss, grief, and guilt. While this subject is rarely present in the public discourse, the poems depict the healing process, the lack of support and acknowledgment of
trauma, emotional and psychological struggle, and self-reflection.
The Symbolic Role of Ex-Yugoslav Literature in The Ministry of Pain by Dubravka Ugrešić
Transcultural Studies, 2018
The paper deals with the ways in which Dubravka Ugrešić treats Yugoslav/Croatian literature, lite... more The paper deals with the ways in which Dubravka Ugrešić treats Yugoslav/Croatian literature, literary genres, conventions and style in her novelThe Ministry of Pain. From the perspective of an exiled professor of literature, Tanja Lucić, and her exiled students living in the Netherlands, Yugoslav literature is perceived and valued in the light of several non-literary factors. Tanja Lucić finds it absurd to teach their former country’s literature (or literatures) as if the notion of nation, to which they no longer seem to relate, or the future war and trauma are always already inscribed in it. This oppositional reading and its reflection in the very design of the novelThe Ministry of Painwill be discussed in this paper, in an effort to outline Ugrešić’s post-national poetics.
Naučni sastanak slavista u Vukove dane, 52, 2023
WOMEN AUTHORS AS ANTI-WAR ACTIVISTS: VJETAR IDE NA JUG I OBRĆE SE NA SJEVER
A book of correspond... more WOMEN AUTHORS AS ANTI-WAR ACTIVISTS: VJETAR IDE NA JUG I OBRĆE SE NA SJEVER
A book of correspondence of female authors Rada Iveković, Biljana Jovanović, Maruša Krese, and Radmila Lazić assembles the letters faxed between Ljubljana, Berlin, Belgrade, and Paris, from June 1991 until November 1992. Apart from the letters, it includes newspaper articles, documents concerning anti-war protests and conferences, poetry, and essays. The correspondence is thematically related to the breakup of Yugoslavia, civil war, emigration, repressive nationalism, and transnational identity. As an alternative discourse and testimony about many social actions, it is an essential contribution to the women's anti-war prose in the Post-Yugoslav cultural sphere. Writing against the dominant ideology and prevalent public representations, the authors strive to influence the culture of remembrance and collective memory.
Razvitak 251-256, 2018
Prevod pesama Džona Ešberija i tekst o njegovoj poeziji
Marginalni i marginalizovani žanrovi u književnosti, 2022
THE MARRIAGE MARKET AND SELF-REALIZATION: JANE AUSTEN AND MILICA JAKOVLJEVIĆ MIR-JAM
The purpose... more THE MARRIAGE MARKET AND SELF-REALIZATION: JANE AUSTEN AND MILICA JAKOVLJEVIĆ MIR-JAM
The purpose of this comparative analysis of Jane Austen’s and Milica Jakovljević Mir-Jam՚s novels was to illustrate some apparent similarities in their topics and structure, as well as to point out the important differences between their works based on the assumptions of their genre. The main theme of marriage market dictates certain narrative patterns, connected with family relations, vulnerable heroine, class differences and
cross-class relationships. Both authors consider the position and role of women, representing not a revolutionary or progressive attitude, but rather trying to realize the conditions and opportunities for women’s self-fulfillment in a patriarchal society. Jane Austen uses complex characterization and many different narrative techniques to achieve ambiguity and polysemy, sometimes even providing space for an oppositional reading. In her romance novels, Jakovljević usually follows
a complicated plot from a single perspective, that of her main character, guiding her readers carefully to the foreseen conclusions and happy ending. However, in her later novels, she sometimes gives up static characterization and seems to lose the confidence in unquestionable and unchangeable moral norms, dealing with important social problems and thus subverting the schematic structure of genre to a certain extent.
The consideration of Milica Jakovljević՚s fiction in a comparative context indicates its relevance for the development of Serbian popular literature and popularization of reading in the first half of the 20th century, as well as for the examination of the history of private life, social roles and relations.
Key words: romance novel, genre, marriage, patriarchy, narrative strategies, social relations, characters, pride.
Postajanje autorkom, zbornik radova, Novi Sad, Kulturni centar "Miloš Crnjanski", Beograd, Institut za književnost i umetnost, 2022
Zorka Velimirović was one of the most important and prolific translators in the Serbian literatur... more Zorka Velimirović was one of the most important and prolific translators in the Serbian literature of the first half of the 20th century. She translated more than twenty literary and scientific books from Russian into Serbian and regularly published her translation of stories and short prose by Russian authors in magazines and newspapers.
Z. Velimirović comes from a prominent family of archpriest Miloš Velimirović, whom himself authored several ethnographic texts and was one of the founders of Srpska književna zadruga. In the family home, his children were surrounded by books and read several journals and newspapers, among others, magazine Нива from St Petersburg. Through its literary supplement, young Zorka became acquainted with contemporary Russian literature and made her first steps in learning the Russian language by self-tuition. Although she was prevented from continuing her education, Zorka Velimirović penetrated the boundaries set for her educational and cultural emancipation. Just as her younger sisters, writer Ljubica Velimirović Popadić and sculptor Vukosava Velimirović,
did after her, she pursued her self-motivated learning. Learning the foreign language empowered her to establish a new awareness of the gained cultural capital and recreate herself as a cultural mediator.
She published her first translations of Chekhov’s stories in newspapers in 1909 and her first translated book, Ivan Turgenev’s Rudin, in 1913. At that time, translation was usually perceived as a derivative and passive process and product, a mechanical linguistic transmission. However, many women translators found a way to gain authority through this mediation: they experienced how rewriting brings the power of selection, interpretation, and leading readers through the foreign culture and ideology. The substantial translation oeuvre of Zorka Velimirović has
been widely reviewed and acclaimed for its fluent prose and rich language in the 1920s. Her contribution to the literary reception of Turgenev, A. P. Chekhov, and L. N. Tolstoy is particularly significant and reflects her lifelong inclination toward their poetics and worldview. Several of her translations are still in use today, regularly printed in new editions; however, the most important is the translation of the novel Anna Karenina by L. Tolstoy. She translated the novel in 1934 for the Selected works of Tolstoy, and after World Word II, it was published in the redaction by Isidora Sekulić. That translation still introduces thousands of readers to Tolstoy’s literary world but has not received nearly enough critical or scholarly attention.
Manifesti u srpskoj književnosti 20. veka, 2022
JUDITA ŠALGO’S PERFORMATIVE TEXT
In the literary work of neo-avant-garde and postmodern author J... more JUDITA ŠALGO’S PERFORMATIVE TEXT
In the literary work of neo-avant-garde and postmodern author Judita Šalgo, the emphasis is so often on the performative function of language, cross-genre, metatextuality, and autoreferentiality, that one can point to a certain manifesto spirit as its constant feature. This analysis focuses on the “Performed Texts” (“My Six Minutes”, “Reading Instructions”, “Food Supplement”, and “Position of Literature”) from Šalgo’s second poetry collection entitled 67 minutes, aloud, in search of their explicit manifesto, or rather anti-manifesto design. Being part of a performance, these texts provide the experience of presence and involvement but also stress the processuality and openness of the utterance. For this reason, I have read them in light of Jacques Derrida’s contribution to the theory of the performative. Derrida’s criticism of J. L. Austin is crucial in performative art, particularly his view on Austin’s idea that performative utterances are parasitic or non-serious if “said by an actor on the stage, or if introduced in a poem, or spoken in soliloqui” (Austin 1975: 22). Derrida asserts that iterability is a part of every performative act (and language itself), concerning its inevitable break with a prior context and the assumption of new contexts. Similar to other neo-avant-garde writers, Judita Šalgo’s poetics revolve around the performative because an act of utterance is also an act of contextualization. In her texts, Šalgo manipulates the notions of authorial intent, failure/success in communication and performance, referentiality, as well as the fluidity of context. Using manifesto tactics such as demonstration, persuasion, and suggestion, the poet engages her recipients in the creative process and thus shares some responsibility with them. “Performed Texts” refer repeatedly to their modes of existence and operation as a literary work, discarding a common belief that an aesthetic phenomenon can be kept separate from its social usage and context. Presenting itself as a manifesto of the so-called timism or minutism or time literature, the text “My Six Minutes” questions the use of private and public time, especially the spending of paid working time on poetry and performance. “Reading Instructions” and “Food Supplement” also look into the context within which literature is situated. They suggest the subversion of performance as a collective experience and a step out of everyday life. In her attempt to unmask the impact of a dominant social paradigm on art, in “Position of Literature” Šalgo strives to move away from literature as an institution. She emphasizes the embodied language and ties between language and position or action, while she keeps reminding recipients of the free play they could be playing.
Srpski jezik, književnost i umetnost: ROMAN I GRAD, 2022
SITUATING GENDER IN BILJANA JOVANOVIĆ’S NOVEL PADA AVALA
In her first novel, "Pada Avala," Bilja... more SITUATING GENDER IN BILJANA JOVANOVIĆ’S NOVEL PADA AVALA
In her first novel, "Pada Avala," Biljana Jovanović depicted the city of Belgrade - its urban center and the suburb areas - from the perspective of a female protagonist, young and rebellious Jelena Belovuk, who challenges the established correlation between space, body, and gender. Through Jelena’s everyday movements and interactions in public and private spaces, Jovanović points out her positioning in the codified and often oppressive urban environment. Jelena attempts to invert the power structures inscribed in the space, get around the imposed passive role, sexually objectifying gaze, and the authority that evaluates and excludes.
Marked as a mentally/physically deviant by the hegemonic discourses of masculinism, she is suppressed to the absolute periphery of the psychiatric hospital in Padinska Skela, only to repeat her mother’s narrative. Just as B. Jovanović indicates how mental illness comes as a consequence of depriving a woman of her voice and story, the protagonist’s urban mapping reads like a process of spatial demarcation and appropriation as an expression of the need for belonging.
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Papers by Sonja Veselinovic
and loss of identity of Willy Loman, the main character in Arthur Miller’s famous play Death of a Salesman. The play demonstrates how Budimir advises his young colleague, apprentice Dragi, about the skills and resourcefulness needed for the traveling salesman, not a very respectable
job, but the one that gives a man freedom to travel, organize and manage
his working hours and strategies. Buda does not accept to be identified with
his job or reduced to his vocation, whose social marginalization he also
protests. Similar to how Miller reveals the reverse of the American dream,
Mihailović displays the social and economic problems in the background
of the Yugoslav socialist propaganda of equal chances for everyone. His
depiction of characters of provincial workers lacking ambitions or initiative
is particularly striking in this latent social critique. Large print runs of the state publishing houses a repercussion of the notion of culture as a tool of
progress and the elevation of the working-class, become a commodity that
is hard to sell in an increasing consumer society. Insecure and disdained
in Yugoslav society, Budimir’s vocation is constantly paralleled with his
ambitions as a former best student of Šabac high school and his brief literary
career. The paper addresses how Mihailović problematizes the notion of
literature on several levels. In the first place, it is just another commodity
in a consumerist society, gradually losing its symbolic value to be estimated
solely by its practical use. Literature is also an integral part of humanistic
education expected to develop universal values and foster the elevation of
the whole population. Buda published a poetry collection as a young man but now disdains that early poetic ambition. On that account, literature also becomes a measure of personal failure and misunderstanding with society. Mihailović considers the role of literature in Yugoslav society in his play and perhaps even makes a metapoetic sign of his title, suggesting the obstacles that a professional writer faces in such a cultural milieu.
From the Death of the Author to the Life-Text
In the past few decades, the flourishing of literary biographical films has underscored the need for a more in-depth consideration of the representation of authorship in cinema. The biopics centred on literary figures balance between the wish to preserve the aura and mythical tradition of exceptionally talented individuals, and the need to represent the characters as vulnerable, flawed, and relatable to the audience. The authorial figure in biographical films signifies both presence and absence: it is a self-referential embodiment of post-structuralist and postmodern crises of authorship. Despite Barthes’s and Foucault’s assertions, the author persistently returns in the form of someone’s body, voice, or a hand engaged in writing the text. The author in the film is performatively constructed, while the narrative shapes a life-text composed of facts, impressions, and cultural codes. In the second part of the paper, I analyse the representation of literary figures and the framing of
the biographical through poetic in Terence Davies’s films A Quiet Passion (2016) and Benediction (2021).
neo-avant-garde literature and aesthetic practices, such as the OHO group, Fluxus, Yugoslav Black Wave, Vojvodinian neo-avant-garde, Mediala, and others. Using the techniques of montage, collage, and citation, the magazine emphasized the grounding of contemporary anti-institutional art in the global student and labor movement of 1968. The articles incorporated excerpts from newspaper texts and public documents relating to the political events of 1968 in Western and Eastern Europe, especially Czechoslovakia, thus encouraging readers to unmask the mechanisms of media messages created and disseminated from the hegemonic positions. On the other hand, the magazine introduced new artistic practices that undermined dominant aesthetic values, hierarchies, and representation. The authors indicated the spontaneous and manifestative effect of this aesthetic orientation, similar to the revolutionary energy.
dans cette problématique est rendu possible grâce aux études des années 1980-1990, de J. E. Rivers, Eva Ahlstedt, Antoine Compagnon, Eve Sedgwick, Leo Bersani. La plupart de ces critiques part du chapitre introductif de Sodome et Gomorrhe, « Première apparition des hommes-femmes, descendants de ceux des habitants de Sodome qui furent épargnés par le feu du ciel », où Proust établit le discours canonique sur l’homosexualité dans le roman. Il sous-entend l’introduction des conceptions scientifiques et sociales régnantes sur ce phénomène, mais aussi leur questionnement graduel et détournement à travers le processus narratif. Pour cette raison, la terminologie par laquelle on introduit et désigne l’homosexualité est extrêmement importante ; nous consacrons notre analyse dans une grande mesure aux problèmes de la traduction de ces termes en langues serbe et croate.
L’objet de l’analyse sont les fragments prélevés de l’édition croate de La Recherche (U traženju izgubljena vremena / U traganju za izgubljenim vremenom, 1951-1965, 1965, 1972, 1977), traduite par Augustin Ujević et Vinko Tecilazić, ainsi que les fragments de la traduction serbe par Živojin Živojnović: U traganju za iščezlim vremenom, 1983 (seconde édition au titre changé: U traganju za minulim vremenom, 2007). Notre travail prend en considération la manière de traduire les termes-clés, tels que : inverti, inversion, hommesfemmes, gomorrhéen, les Gomorrhéennes. Nous prenons en considération également les fragments où l’homosexualité est présentée dans différents contextes : médicinal, sexuel, historique ou mythologique. Etant donné que la traduction croate fut sensiblement antérieure, à l’époque où l’homosexualité fut un tabou social et punie par la loi, Ujević en tant que traducteur de la « Première apparition… » et Tecilazić en tant que traducteur de Sodome et Gomorrhe, La Prisonnière, Albertine disparue et du Temps retrouvé, ne prêtent pas beaucoup d’attention aux nuances sémantiques dans le traitement de l’homotextualité. Živojnović tache de suivre plus conséquemment la divergence terminologique de Proust, en imitant le savant discours scientifique ; ainsi pour traduire le terme inverti, il choisit un terme de style âpre, afin de rendre plus précise la signification. Ujević approche la terminologie plus librement, souvent en la réduisant aux expressions homoseksualac/homoseksualnost, tout en évitant le terme inversion. Tecilazić suit sa trace, avec un succès changeant – à certains endroits, son approche est plus créative, et aux autres il introduit des qualifications négatives ou moqueuses, absentes du texte original. Quand il s’agit de
thématiser le lesbianisme, le vocabulaire de Proust apparait beaucoup plus fluide et se dirige vers un manque de définition, tout comme le transfert langagier qui dépend plus de la manière dont le traducteur interprète les nuances sémantiques. les traductions croate et serbe tentent de transposer l’homosexualité en entier, sans tenir compte des résistances potentielles dans la réception ou les essais des critiques à diminuer l’importance de cette problématique dans l’œuvre de Proust.
and essays in Yugoslav, or more specifically, Serbian translated literature, with the intention to examine the influence of the Russian poet as an exemplary cultural figure in the works of Yugoslav women writers. As a cultural icon, Tsvetaeva is present in the literary oeuvre of Serbian writer Biljana Jovanović (1953‒1996), from her second novel, "Dogs and Others", to her last play, "A Room on the Bosphorus", where she appears as one of the characters. Presenting Tsvetaeva as a countercultural figure, Jovanović builds her authorial authority and integrity based on the example of the Russian author's poetic persona and her autobiographical writing. However, she also establishes a reciprocal relationship, paying homage to this influential poet who, during her lifetime, was deprived of adequate attention from readers and critics. This aspect is also highly relevant in the work "Marina, or About Biography" by Croatian author Irena Vrkljan (1930‒2021), especially in the frame of the reception of Tsvetaeva's autobiographical works. By juxtaposing details from Tsvetaeva's biography with her own, Vrkljan legitimizes her poetic confrontation with genre, social, and gender conventions. In both writers' works, Tsvetaeva appears as a privileged interlocutor and a desired reader, in contrast to the presumed critical reaction of the literary establishment.
qu’ils sont le reflet d’une domination de l’esthétique réaliste dans l’ex-Yougoslavie des années 1960.
her own and her husband’s friend and comrade, tries to help her through hardship and isolation, exposing him to suspicion and inquiry. Through several scenes of questioning the suspects, the author demonstrates the rhetoric of investigators and their identification with the power of the regime, especially emphasizing how they manipulate the discourse to exclude and isolate the suspect from the public sphere. The nonlinear narration of the novel puts the current political crisis in parallel with the protagonist’s wartime experiences and camp horrors, so he experiences them as a dual trauma. The interpretation offers new insights into questions of personal and collective identity, the representation of totalitarian system and language, and the linguistic spaces of resistance and creativity that challenge dogma and silence.
gender and morality. The analysis focuses primarily on the works The Murder at the Vicarage, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, “The Double Clue” and Hallowe’en Party and their film and television adaptations to examine both the textual and subtextual instances of marginalization, and the various attempts to keep the Other within the confines of normative identity.
This paper endeavors to explore the theme of motherhood within the realm of contemporary Serbian poetry and contribute to the broader understanding of the cultural and artistic significance of motherhood within the Serbian poetic tradition. Starting from my previous research with Sonja Milovanović on poetry about pregnancy and childbirth, I focus
here on the works of poets who introduced the theme of motherhood as a relevant or even crucial motif of their poetry collections. By delving into a selection of representative poems of Ana Seferović and Tanja Stupar Trifunović, the study aims to discern the multifaceted portrayals and complexities of motherhood that intersect with broader sociocultural and
historical contexts. Seferović depicts the ambivalent mother figure in a patriarchal society, whose traditional gender role constraints her to protect and bond with her children. Only through her mothering experience is the speaker in Seferović’s collection Materina able to identify with and understand her female ancestors and embrace motherhood without
losing her personal, intellectual, and creative capacities. The transformative power of this theme within the poetic imagination is distinctive for the poems of Stupar Trifunović. Her poems about pregnancy, childbirth, and motherhood provide female and maternal
perspectives and try to take control of the narrative. Illustrating the transition from daughter-perspective to matrifocal discourse, she tends to explore the complex interplay between personal experiences, political upheavals, and the broader sociocultural milieu. This theme tends to become even more relevant in the works of the Serbian female poets born in the 1980s. Marija Krtinić Veckov offers a bitter critique of the dominant cultural representation of motherhood in Serbian society and demonstrates how mothering is still marked by guilt and helplessness in an aggressive, condemning environment. In her new poetry collection, Aleksandra Jovičić Đinović introduces a poignant and emotionally charged topic of pregnancy loss. Her poetic imagery, techniques, and symbols focus on transposing the experience of loss, grief, and guilt. While this subject is rarely present in the public discourse, the poems depict the healing process, the lack of support and acknowledgment of
trauma, emotional and psychological struggle, and self-reflection.
A book of correspondence of female authors Rada Iveković, Biljana Jovanović, Maruša Krese, and Radmila Lazić assembles the letters faxed between Ljubljana, Berlin, Belgrade, and Paris, from June 1991 until November 1992. Apart from the letters, it includes newspaper articles, documents concerning anti-war protests and conferences, poetry, and essays. The correspondence is thematically related to the breakup of Yugoslavia, civil war, emigration, repressive nationalism, and transnational identity. As an alternative discourse and testimony about many social actions, it is an essential contribution to the women's anti-war prose in the Post-Yugoslav cultural sphere. Writing against the dominant ideology and prevalent public representations, the authors strive to influence the culture of remembrance and collective memory.
The purpose of this comparative analysis of Jane Austen’s and Milica Jakovljević Mir-Jam՚s novels was to illustrate some apparent similarities in their topics and structure, as well as to point out the important differences between their works based on the assumptions of their genre. The main theme of marriage market dictates certain narrative patterns, connected with family relations, vulnerable heroine, class differences and
cross-class relationships. Both authors consider the position and role of women, representing not a revolutionary or progressive attitude, but rather trying to realize the conditions and opportunities for women’s self-fulfillment in a patriarchal society. Jane Austen uses complex characterization and many different narrative techniques to achieve ambiguity and polysemy, sometimes even providing space for an oppositional reading. In her romance novels, Jakovljević usually follows
a complicated plot from a single perspective, that of her main character, guiding her readers carefully to the foreseen conclusions and happy ending. However, in her later novels, she sometimes gives up static characterization and seems to lose the confidence in unquestionable and unchangeable moral norms, dealing with important social problems and thus subverting the schematic structure of genre to a certain extent.
The consideration of Milica Jakovljević՚s fiction in a comparative context indicates its relevance for the development of Serbian popular literature and popularization of reading in the first half of the 20th century, as well as for the examination of the history of private life, social roles and relations.
Key words: romance novel, genre, marriage, patriarchy, narrative strategies, social relations, characters, pride.
Z. Velimirović comes from a prominent family of archpriest Miloš Velimirović, whom himself authored several ethnographic texts and was one of the founders of Srpska književna zadruga. In the family home, his children were surrounded by books and read several journals and newspapers, among others, magazine Нива from St Petersburg. Through its literary supplement, young Zorka became acquainted with contemporary Russian literature and made her first steps in learning the Russian language by self-tuition. Although she was prevented from continuing her education, Zorka Velimirović penetrated the boundaries set for her educational and cultural emancipation. Just as her younger sisters, writer Ljubica Velimirović Popadić and sculptor Vukosava Velimirović,
did after her, she pursued her self-motivated learning. Learning the foreign language empowered her to establish a new awareness of the gained cultural capital and recreate herself as a cultural mediator.
She published her first translations of Chekhov’s stories in newspapers in 1909 and her first translated book, Ivan Turgenev’s Rudin, in 1913. At that time, translation was usually perceived as a derivative and passive process and product, a mechanical linguistic transmission. However, many women translators found a way to gain authority through this mediation: they experienced how rewriting brings the power of selection, interpretation, and leading readers through the foreign culture and ideology. The substantial translation oeuvre of Zorka Velimirović has
been widely reviewed and acclaimed for its fluent prose and rich language in the 1920s. Her contribution to the literary reception of Turgenev, A. P. Chekhov, and L. N. Tolstoy is particularly significant and reflects her lifelong inclination toward their poetics and worldview. Several of her translations are still in use today, regularly printed in new editions; however, the most important is the translation of the novel Anna Karenina by L. Tolstoy. She translated the novel in 1934 for the Selected works of Tolstoy, and after World Word II, it was published in the redaction by Isidora Sekulić. That translation still introduces thousands of readers to Tolstoy’s literary world but has not received nearly enough critical or scholarly attention.
In the literary work of neo-avant-garde and postmodern author Judita Šalgo, the emphasis is so often on the performative function of language, cross-genre, metatextuality, and autoreferentiality, that one can point to a certain manifesto spirit as its constant feature. This analysis focuses on the “Performed Texts” (“My Six Minutes”, “Reading Instructions”, “Food Supplement”, and “Position of Literature”) from Šalgo’s second poetry collection entitled 67 minutes, aloud, in search of their explicit manifesto, or rather anti-manifesto design. Being part of a performance, these texts provide the experience of presence and involvement but also stress the processuality and openness of the utterance. For this reason, I have read them in light of Jacques Derrida’s contribution to the theory of the performative. Derrida’s criticism of J. L. Austin is crucial in performative art, particularly his view on Austin’s idea that performative utterances are parasitic or non-serious if “said by an actor on the stage, or if introduced in a poem, or spoken in soliloqui” (Austin 1975: 22). Derrida asserts that iterability is a part of every performative act (and language itself), concerning its inevitable break with a prior context and the assumption of new contexts. Similar to other neo-avant-garde writers, Judita Šalgo’s poetics revolve around the performative because an act of utterance is also an act of contextualization. In her texts, Šalgo manipulates the notions of authorial intent, failure/success in communication and performance, referentiality, as well as the fluidity of context. Using manifesto tactics such as demonstration, persuasion, and suggestion, the poet engages her recipients in the creative process and thus shares some responsibility with them. “Performed Texts” refer repeatedly to their modes of existence and operation as a literary work, discarding a common belief that an aesthetic phenomenon can be kept separate from its social usage and context. Presenting itself as a manifesto of the so-called timism or minutism or time literature, the text “My Six Minutes” questions the use of private and public time, especially the spending of paid working time on poetry and performance. “Reading Instructions” and “Food Supplement” also look into the context within which literature is situated. They suggest the subversion of performance as a collective experience and a step out of everyday life. In her attempt to unmask the impact of a dominant social paradigm on art, in “Position of Literature” Šalgo strives to move away from literature as an institution. She emphasizes the embodied language and ties between language and position or action, while she keeps reminding recipients of the free play they could be playing.
In her first novel, "Pada Avala," Biljana Jovanović depicted the city of Belgrade - its urban center and the suburb areas - from the perspective of a female protagonist, young and rebellious Jelena Belovuk, who challenges the established correlation between space, body, and gender. Through Jelena’s everyday movements and interactions in public and private spaces, Jovanović points out her positioning in the codified and often oppressive urban environment. Jelena attempts to invert the power structures inscribed in the space, get around the imposed passive role, sexually objectifying gaze, and the authority that evaluates and excludes.
Marked as a mentally/physically deviant by the hegemonic discourses of masculinism, she is suppressed to the absolute periphery of the psychiatric hospital in Padinska Skela, only to repeat her mother’s narrative. Just as B. Jovanović indicates how mental illness comes as a consequence of depriving a woman of her voice and story, the protagonist’s urban mapping reads like a process of spatial demarcation and appropriation as an expression of the need for belonging.