Many of the men in my former homeland smirk like this. It’s the way the men of the Serbian parliament sniggered at the beginning of the war (I’m sure there’s a video somewhere). Obviously bored, one threw a paper ball at another’s head, and suddenly it was laughs all around. The TV cameras started rolling, the ball was thrown on, and for a brief moment the parliamentary session resembled a rowdy schoolroom, full of little boys. But outside those walls, because of those same little boys, little boys grown fat, old, and gray, a war merrily raged.
The interview with the old man, a university professor, was the five-minute media crown placed on his head by the Croatian weekly Globus. From the interview we learn that the professor is a Pole by birth; that he came to Zagreb with his family in 1931; that his mother was Polish and was forced to convert to the Orthodox church; that he was baptized in an evangelical church in Zagreb (his mother thus making amends); that he had come to love Croatia; that he’d joined the Partisans, capturing two Germans; and that during the war he had a Jewish girlfriend (which wasn’t easy, he says), for whom he acquired papers and helped out of Zagreb to the safety of the Adriatic coast. Last but not least, the respected professor of Russian literature signals his disdain for “demanding” literature (let the super demanding readers read Krleža for the hundredth time, let them read the pick of the foreign writers), explaining that he’d rather read local Croatian “neighborhood” literature, that intended for the mainstream reader, among whom the professor counts himself (we, mainstream readers).
What do these few details tell the hypothetical foreign reader? Nothing in particular. To be fair, the more sensitive foreign reader might find the old professor’s bragging about having saved his Jewish girlfriend a little suspect. After all, it’s what would be expected of any decent person, particularly given the professor’s admission that he was in a position to obtain the necessary documents. It might also occur to our hypothetical foreign reader that the professor was actually signalling to the Croatian public that he himself isn’t a Jew, something the politically correct foreigner, unlike the average Croat, might also think a little tasteless. But what do these few details tell any Croatian reader of middle age or older? A lot.
Self-positioning is one of the most vaunted skills in both Croatian media practice and Croatian everyday life, the expression “he’s done well for himself” a kind of verbal medal bestowed on the best of the best. Politicians, journalists, writers, and other public figures seem most proficient in doing well for themselves. However, this impression of excellence is only created by virtue of them being public people. Other people get by the best they can.
The professor is the son of a factory owner, but the Bolsheviks destroyed the family plant, a fact that automatically elicits compassion in the average Croatian reader (Oh, c’mon: Bolsheviks, Russians, Serbs, they’re all the same communist bandits!). By mentioning his baptism, the professor tips his hat to the masses of Croatian Catholics. And as a Partisan in the Second World War, his capture (just capture, not execution!) of two Germans — a feat he puts down to his fluency in German (a little show of erudition!) — positions the professor as a goodly and Godly humanitarian — among the Partisans.
Why does the professor reveal these details so publicly? The timing is completely understandable — he recently published his autobiography. But the reason? Today, these kinds of details are acceptable. Fifteen years ago they weren’t. Every public mention of Partisans and anti-fascism provoked an outcry, until a newer government, embodied by the recently-retired Croatian president, changed the tune a little. Of course, the professor didn’t mention that he was also a member of the Yugoslav Community Party, as this might still enrage Croatian readers, many of whom were members of the Communist Party themselves, but who, in accord with the times, have diligently deleted this fact from their biographies. Of prime importance is that the professor is a Croatian patriot, and that Croatia is now his true homeland. The professor goes on to boast of a minor, albeit “courageous,” bit of mischief in which he was involved: At a student meeting in 1968, he put together a resolution. But he skips over the long “Yugoslav” years after the Second World War. Everybody knows that as you get older, you increasingly look back and recall the years of your youth, forgetting the more recent ones—he declares. No one would dispute that one. Old people also forget what they’ve read over the course of their lives. It’s a pity the professor didn’t at least remember his countryman, Czesław Miłosz, and his remarkable The Captive Mind, or his other countryman, Miroslav Krleža, and his equally remarkable On the Edge of Reason.
3. What bugged me?
What bugged me about the interview? And why the ill-tempered objections to an old man basking in a deserved flash of media attention? I know the person in the photograph. I understand his language and recognize the nuances and tones. I catch the scent of every word. I know the local Croatian newspeak, which can change in a split-second, depending on the occasion, and which every once in a while undergoes institutional changes. I react like a finely-tuned sensor, I know that every word is there to nuzzle one ear and inflame the other, that every sentence, even the most banal — whose absence of ambiguity the innocent reader doesn’t doubt for a second — is just a new layer of powder on its owner’s face.
Why did I take on the dreary task of “unmasking” a completely inconsequential newspaper story? The text is, in any case, untranslatable, and it’s untranslatable because it is so deeply contextual. In such a case, attempting translation is like going into battle against Hydra — the translator masochistically agrees to losing in advance.
Try to imagine a situation where a woman who has just been raped tries to give an account of her ordeal, but rather than via the usual channels (the police, the courts, the legal system) is forced to tell her story using the only channel remaining — the “broken telephone.”[1] The desperate woman whispers into the ear of one of her neighbors: “They ravished me. .” The whisper is passed from ear to ear, before the last person in the chain boldly declares: “They lavished me!” Everyone bursts out laughing. The woman tries again, and every time new words pop out the other end. Everyone’s having a rollicking time. “You’re monsters!” the distressed woman screams. “You’re bonkers!” yells the last person in the chain, and everyone again roars with laughter.
The metaphor of the “broken telephone” can be used in regard to all countries of the former Yugoslavia. Having entered every sphere of life, the language of the “broken telephone” is omnipresent: in the media, institutional life, politics, the way people think, their interpersonal relations, their everyday lives. As a result, many crimes remain un-investigated, many victims have been rendered silent, many criminals declared heroes, many thieves business people, many idiots intellectuals (and the odd intellectual an idiot), many perpetrators victims, many victims perpetrators, many crazies normal, and many normal people crazy. As we speak, Radovan Karadžić is playing “broken telephone” at the Hague Tribunal. He brushes off words as if they were pesky little thistles. Every word of the indictment that sounds like ravish, he coolly transforms into lavish.