THE BALKAN CHRONOTOPE
The Hermeneutics of Evil: a Re-stabilized Archetype,
an Anthropologic Constant or a Trans-national Logos of Profit
Speaking of the archetypal structures of humanity, which
have marked the entire literary typology since the beginning of the literary
arts, we have primarily in mind, unfortunately, the diabolic, perverse,
irrational and volatile human relations; the various kinds of generous
familiar tragedies: murders of all kinds, crimes and sins, which constitute
the soul-stirring narrative, dramatic situations and characters. Let me
enumerate only some of them: Cain's jealousy and fratricidal relations in
general; matricides, infanticides and the syndromes of Medea and Cassandra;
incest, Oedipus complex, Jocasta's fate, forbidden love between brother and
sister, sacrificial rites, banishment or the putting to death of the single
or youngest child (son or daughter); Saturn's/Chronos' brute instinct to eat
their own children, terrible maledictions that mothers cast on their sons
(expressed to perfection in Macedonian popular ballads), myths such as the
one about the infirm Dojcin and the black Arab woman.....
It seems that evil has the thought processes of a
nymphomaniac or a satyr; that it is immanently insatiable and vigorous; that
it changes its shape like Proteus to hide and then re-emerge to be born
again. Many writers use this idea in their works and one of the most
heart-wrenching poems on this theme is Pesjo brdce by Blaze Koneski:
evil has no beginning and no end. It is obvious that the differentia
specifica of the human race is not so much the art of the word/skill of
logos, but rather, the poetics of sadism, the satanic predisposition to take
pleasure in the torture of the Other (human being); the torture of the other
human essence. In other words, it is the methodology of sophistication and
perfectioning of the forms of torture, sadistic rhetoric and stylistics. The
animal realm knows no such ritualistic aspects and institutionalized sadism.
The realization that inhumaneness is originally/immanently human and a
civilisational experience (which is nurtured and encouraged by ideologies,
institutions of the system and the establishment) is parasitic!
It is preferable and more pleasant to speak about the
poetics of dreams and about the principle of hope, but in specific social
and historical circumstances, the realization of the logic and epistemology
of evil is a priority. This is because we believe in the possibility of
confronting evil with several pragmatic potions and strategies. If we cannot
completely vanquish evil, then let us do so at least temporarily and for a
longer period. Let us neutralize it, attenuate it or (at least) outwit it
(trick its wily nature). Just like the legendary Prince Marko who, thanks to
his cunning and blind heroism, saved himself from an overwhelming and
invincible enemy. He made everyone believe that he was present on the
battlefield, but in fact he escaped by stealth and hid away in a secret
location.
How are we to confront the evil? Is it not true that
every human being-or a human being as such-is, by the anthropological
definition, obsessed and determined by evil? What is the nature of the world
in which evil is a constant and dominant force? Another question comes to
mind which offers a valid "argumentation" in favor of the above premise,
which encourages ethical contempt as well as epistemological curiosity: What
is the origin of such intense passion for the theme of evil in literature
and its images of the world? Why is it that the pragmatics of evil are
constantly being regenerated and modernized? In this context the following
questions also come to mind: Are the pragmatics of evil a Balkan specificum
and speciality, or is there a special Slavic "antithesis?" Is evil perhaps a
universal, general human "gook" (property, acquired trait, tradition,
convention!!!)? Is the Balkan chronotope predestined to cyclical
destruction, reconstruction and construction, to the fact that we destroy
and then rebuild from the start- from less than point zero? The epistemology
and hermeneutics of evil are today absolutely imperative in order that we
may, with their help, vanquish the inertia of evil, and create a new
philosophy and strategy of anti-evil, anti-war-a strategy of the culture of
peace, as has been proclaimed by UNESCO.
In my lengthy dramatic poem, Izgon zla (Banishment of
Evil), I appeal for good thoughts, which are a way out of the vicious circle
of evil. What is necessary is an individual as well as a collective
catharsis of the discourse of evil and vengeance. We need to forget a
little, to be the child inside of us for a while, to wisely forgive and
reconcile a little, so that we do not poison our souls and subconsciousness
with misery. We must do this so that our subconscious cannot rule over us
even after death; so that we may preserve the meaning of our existence and
of the existence of our children and future generations. A shift in the
direction of good is a precondition to at least push evil away from us, to
cast it out, if we cannot free ourselves from it and cleanse ourselves of it
for all time.
In my poetry of course I do not talk about establishing a
new order (of we consider that evil is the internal structure of chaos. the
absence of reason, the castration of humanity) that would sanction
institutions which produce misery, destruction, hate, mass delusion and
hysteria, and ideologies which foment the forces of evil and the rhetoric of
war. An example of this is the dogma of a certain nation under threat- one
of the fundamental premises of the worst neo-fascist ideologies of the
Balkan and European regions after World War II. The wars in the Balkans
usually begin with mass illusion and pseudo-concepts, which indicates that
war, as a mystification or personification of evil (in this framework belong
also other personifications: tragic, Aristotelian transcendence and
excessive will for power and domination; for money and conquests of foreign
soil and property; for foreign past, foreign countries, foreign identity; a
passion for a violent redrawing of borders; a sense for despicable
intentions, for deceits, abuses, national vanity and chauvinism; for social,
psychological familiar and sexual frustrations...), is not an inherent
anthropological instinct of the individual, but primarily a premeditated
trait that refers to the institutions of power and state, and is supported
by them ( political leaders, army, police, government, political parties,
the media, etc.).
The evil of war is perpetrated by the interests of people
at the highest level of power in one or several countries, and by interest
for profit which is included in the contemporary shadow theatre, in the
Karagiozov theatre, which has been known in our land since the ancient
times; in the theatre which is directed and supported by democratic regimes
and international associations, hiding behind the scenes their primal
instincts of domination, segregation, discrimination and the
profit-motivated rhetoric on democracy, humanism and human rights. In the
past, and unfortunately also today, this rhetoric motivated a host of
destructive movements and violent conflicts. This idea was well put by
Thomas Mann in his novel, Doctor Faust, where he says that "...the
greatest evil perpetrated in the world is by those leaders who speak in the
name of the people..." In the name of the people mindless killings took
place in Bosnia and Herzegovina at the close of one of the most inhuman
centuries in human history, at the end of a century which claims the right
to reveal itself-which is paradoxical, as always, when it is a question of
fundamental phenomena-in a humanistically Uranian image ( the capricious and
destructive age of Aquarius, the age of technological and information
advancements and apocalyptic and auto-destructive instinct!)
Contradictions are like prophets-they have the power of
vision: everything that we defend does not come true. And for this reason
precisely what was (declaratively) inadmissible happened; everything that
was forbidden and tabooed happened; a grotesque inversion of higher
principles, higher national goals, all inhuman, undemocratic, uncivilized
and irrational in their points of departure. But unforeseeable things also
occurred. There was more entropy than one could imagine. The borders that
were unchangeable were changed; the countries that should not have broken
up, broke up. Everything shifted; everything was masqueraded; everything was
destroyed. There are several ways of breaking up a whole! In the end, it
turned out that "history, like Cassandra, is prophetic, and just like in
case of Cassandra, everyone turned their backs on history. The victors do it
because they prefer not to realize that everything ends in defeat. The
vanquished do it because they refuse to believe that there are no innocent
victims..." (Marguerite Yourcenar, 1942 quoted from Eseji, Novi Sad,
1991,p.47)
We, who hail from Balkan countries, particularly those
who live "on the margin" of Europe, as we have been recently labeled by the
democratic Europe, thereby impudently belittling historical and contemporary
facts; we, who live in the Balkan chronotope and reflect on it (it is the
time-space, or space-time, which absorbs not only our age but also all past
ages; not only current, but also past spatial and national, cultural and
civilisational circumstances); we, who construct and project literary,
artistic, intellectual, emotional and personal images of this Balkan
chronotope; we, the writers of this immanently European space, the
chronotope which, in the imagological perceptions of other nations,
civilizations, collective consciousness and memories, is often recognized as
stereotypical, erroneous and deformed. And from the viewpoint of negative
selection and mythologised prejudice, this chronotope is also identified as
the keg of gunpowder; we should, therefore, have exerted our influence, so
that this image would change and become more three-dimensional and subtle,
poly-semantic and real. The Balkan chronotope, considering the entire
historical burden that it carries, is not only a Pandora's box of discord;
it is not only the lair of evil and the hotbed of wars motivated by such
irrational impulses as the beauty of the mythical Helen, or internal
religious differences between the Orthodox and Catholic Christians of other
religious differences between Slavic nations (islamised Slavs) and other
Balkan nations of non-Slavic origins (Albanians, Greeks, Turks, Romanians,
Roma, etc.). This is because the identity of the Balkan chronotope occurs
primarily in archaic facts, according to which it is the foundation of the
European culture, including Western European and Central European cultures
and civilisations; cecause the Balkan chronotope is a paradigm for dialogue
(openness, communication, interculturalism) and a palimpsest (civilisational
multifacetedness, multi-ethnicity, multi-lingualism); and also because the
Balkan chronotope is the key to deciphering and resolving many recurring
social and interethnic constellations in the contemporary Europe, in the
Europe that lies beyond the Balkan ghetto. Nevertheless, the Balkan stamp of
the reincarnation of evil is not unique and singular-neither in today's
world, nor in the past. This realization is no consolation for us, and also
poses no threat to the second part of the European and non-European world!
The stamp of the Balkan chronotope, such as is being recently enthroned,
institutionalized and conventionalized in the pseudo-centralist
consciousness of the Western world, is deeply imprinted in other figures of
the European chronotope-in the American, South American, Asian, Near
Eastern, African, Australian... This presentation is an attempt to clarify
the archetypal, primal anthropological dimension of evil, due to which evil
manifests itself in different, fragmented ( in the geographic and
chronological sense) chronotopic situations, in human history throughout the
world. This presentation is also an attempt to shift the focus of perception
of the contemporary world and the position and role of evil in it.
The history of the world, the written story of humanity's
past-including sacred writings of various religions origins-represents an
intricate and mysterious chain of stories about countless genocide,
holocausts, ghettoisations, civil and fratricidal wars, conquests; colonial,
avenging and irrational wars, and conflicts. The history of the modern,
Western democratic world is rife with examples of constructions, carried out
on the foundations of destruction, bloodthirsty objectives and even more
bloodthirsty means. History writes about the role of great powers in
fomenting armed conflicts and their interests (the production of perversely
efficient weapons, such as atomic, chemical and psychological weapons, and
the production of nuclear energy and nuclear wastes). The history of the
world has not forgotten the genocide of Indians and Jews (among others), the
Vietnam and Korean wars, apartheid, nazi invasion, Stalinist
totalitarianism, Franco's dictatorship and the South American brand of
dictatorship. Humanity remembers and continues, day after day, to keep track
of the ghastly images of millions of hungry children, women and people in
general; of the information on discrimination and racism, neo-fascism,
neo-colonialism, hegemony, violation of the universal and inherent rights of
nations and their identity and name; about the strategic domination and
exploitation of different chronotopic origins in which the "democratic
world" is involved!
The truth is multifaceted and has a Rashomonic
structure, so that it is not easy (and there is not need) to accept the one
and only centralized, established image of the world. The democratic world
has, despite this, adopted a minimum or consensus on the ethical norms and
respect for human rights and freedoms. There are general points of reference
and criteria for ethicalness and humanness. For this reason, the
Rashomonic projection in no way justifies nations, states, institutions
and individuals-and for that matter no one in the world and, in this
context, not even the Balkans-in their crimes. But one thing is certain: the
Balkans is not the exclusive black sheep in the noble, humane civilized
Western world and other non-Balkan world. There is no reason to ostracise
the Balkan countries, due to stereotypical imagology and their unwelcome and
"original" chronotope of evil, from the company of civilized countries. This
society knows all too well that the Balkan chronotope- the ancient
Macedonian, for example and Hellenic-influenced the cultural systems of
three continents: Europe, Asia, and Africa. It knows all too well that the
collective memory of the Balkan nations, just as their literary and
historical heritage, is a wealth of civilisational strata which have an
exceptional significance for the development of the European culture, and
are at the same time "historical" and variable. Imperialistic, federal and
confederal political systems change and will continue to change. In other
words, the list of independent and autonomous countries will continue to
change. This society of the chosen and powerful knows that the Balkan
chronotope of the gook, reason and art has influenced and can continue to
influence, in a positive way, the intertext of the world and the cultural
systems of the world.
A new view of the world that has been emerging in recent
years would, by analogy, have to pull into its wake also the new
hermeneutics of the Balkan chronotope, of the Balkan cultures and
literatures, namely, the new interpretation within the framework of the new
historical and communicational contextualisation. This contextualisation
includes, in addition to the writer, text, reader and their "intentions"
(Umberto Eco: The Limits of Interpretation), also the extra-textual,
extra-verbal, civilisational, social and coded informational factors
(linguistic, national, traditionalistic, psychological, biographic, social,
racial, ideological, commercial). The new hermeneutics topicalises and
includes the mythical, sacral and archetypal matrixes, as well as the new
conventions of writing and reading literature and art. Unavoidable is the
reconstruction of the contemporary reality and history of humanity as well
as the reconstruction of the principles of their interpretation. Also
unavoidable in this set of principles is the interpretation of human beings
and their civilisational values. The new hermeneutics can produce a new
systematization of cultural values and principles of evaluation; a new
chronotopical contextualisation and regionalisation; a new reading and
interpretation of the Balkans and the "western Balkans" (The latter is a
false, awkward, politicized and provocative construct, foreign to the
tradition and history of south-eastern Europe!). The new hermeneutics will
perhaps offer us a chance for a new political structure and for another
coronation/enthronement of the dethroned reason, humanness, nobleness, good,
and happiness.
The infernal triad of
destruction-reconstruction-construction, which is served to us today as a
necessary evil, as a way out from even greater evil (the choice of the
lesser evil), could be reencoded and transformed from the central, dominant
and constant branding of the Balkan chronotope into a peripheral, random
property and an eloquent remembrance of the unpleasant, forgotten past. This
triad reminds one of the scheme of literary evolution which has been
theoretically justified and introduced by the Russian formalists in the
first decades of the 20th century. But the mentioned scheme should not be
automatically taken as an equivalent. Literary evolution passed through the
following stages: establishment of new values (topicalisation, innovation);
stabilization, traditionalisation, automation and conventionalisation of the
mentioned values; and de-automation (which includes also the projects of
rejection and negation of tradition). This evolution emphasizes the deposit
of individuality and authenticity of originality, which may leave the
impression of non-recognition and destruction of tradition. It in fact
stimulates and generates a new interpretation of conventions, history and
tradition; new strategies of hermeneutics; a new value system. This takes
place at a higher level of the poetic, aesthetic and philosophic system of
conventions. The literary cycles of innovation and traditionalisation (e.g.,
reconstruction and construction) do not destroy the artifacts in literature,
but rather, only review and re-assess the value systems and criteria. The
criteria are a premise of an evolutionary and not of a destructive model of
the functioning of art (and the world!).
We may speak of the true destructive attitude towards
literature and cultural values when it comes to primitive, unmotivated,
politicized restructuring of cultural systems and civilisational and
artistic artifacts. This happens when entire bodies of literature are
amputated; when inquisitions and mounted trials are conducted against
artists and their works; when books are banned and authors blacklisted; when
libraries are burned down (those of Alexandria, Sarajevo, Belgrade and
library of the Mexican writer Sor Juana de la Cruz...); when philosophers,
rhetoricians and writers (Socrates) are poisoned and sentenced to death;
when writers, artists and reporters are killed and persecuted in
concentration camps, prisons and in exile (Latin American, European, Soviet,
Yugoslav...) The list goes on and on! This attitude is the product of
governmental, political and church institutions of power, and here lies the
big difference! If writers co-operate in the establishment and regime of
this kind, they themselves become part of this mindless crime. But
institutions are created by political and state regimes; not by writers as
individuals, but by writers as influential parts of the regime
(academicians, party leaders, ministers...) Diabolical experiences, ascribed
to the Balkan chronotope and recognized as its identity, are quite well
known in Western Europe and North America. For this reason both regions
could, on the basis of their experience of destruction, help the Balkans to
make the transition and resolve the current burning problems of the
processes and strategies of destruction.
Unfortunately literature does not hold the power to
transform the world and educate states and regimes. It can only exert its
influence on individuals, not on superpowers. The challenge of the literary
experience exists, but this as well is human misery. Individuals must have
first-hand experience and survive it to realize what it is all about in
order to become a better person. People do not learn from the experience of
other regions and ages; from other nations and traditions. Perhaps this
aspect of education could become one of the principles of the new
epistemology of evil and new explanation of the Balkan chronotope: of the
Macedonian, Croatian, Bosnian, Serbian, Bulgarian, Greek, Albanian cause and
culture.
Language and literature remember, but man must master the
technique of reading the memory, practice mnemotechnics and establish a
dialogue on an equal footing with others. We are not divided so much by
civilisational specifics and gaps, as by conventionalized prejudices,
institutionalized aversions and profitable interests (the postcolonial
mythology of profit!); by the logistics of the division of the world into
the powerful and the weak; by the archetype of the will for power and by the
terrible, primal, uncontrolled and also institutionalized sadism! If we
are those others, we must sincerely accept the dialogue and not the
arrogance stemming from the rhetoric of power; the arrogance hiding behind
the sophisticated democratic mechanisms and "corpuses". This arrogance
further instigates the pragmatics of evil, the destruction ad infinitum,
and the blind forces and chaos that can no longer be only "Balkan",
because some consequences (environmental implications, for example) are not
and cannot be only regional and sub-regional: Sooner or later, they will
come home to roost.
© Katica Kulavkova, 2001-2007.
All rights reserved.
|
 |
