1.
I started thinking about borders in the early nineties of the last century. Before that, I didn't believe those who claimed to exist.
2.
In a society where multiple cultures intertwine, there can be no question of borders. The existence of borders in a multicultural society actually means that the society is not multicultural, but that it is dominated by one culture that wants to impose and maintain control over other cultures. I have never lived in such a society, a society of strictly controlled cultures. I grew up in a kind of multicultural society, in the socialist-communist version that existed in the former Yugoslavia, and I currently live in its capitalist version, in Canada. In fact, when the ideological layer is removed from both of these versions, it can be seen that there are no differences - a multicultural society either exists or it does not exist; cultures either intertwine or languish each in its own corner; artists either open themselves to different influences or close themselves in the limited space of their local tradition. And although I tend to advocate the value of a mixed culture, I must emphasize that I do not believe that it is inherently better than an independent, local culture. In both cultures, artists can create valuable works; in both cultures they can slip into ideological patterns; in both cultures they have to grapple with extracultural factors that want to control cultural flows. The advantage of a multicultural society is only that it makes it easier to deal with the prejudices on which the policy of glorification of a single national culture is based, although this is no guarantee that an individual coming from a mixed society will see through the mechanisms of prejudice that can direct him towards the murky sediment of racism.
3.
Since I didn't believe in borders for a long time, I never felt that I was crossing them or that I was in the wrong territory. I felt the mixed Jewish-Serbian-Yugoslav culture in which I grew up as a whole, without walls or doors, open for free movement, even when there were noticeable differences in those three segments. History, for example, plays different roles in them: the Jewish tradition is based on the cyclical repetition of history; Serbian tradition glorifies history as a defeat; the Yugoslav tradition was based on a selective approach to history. The simultaneous belonging to these traditions did not, however, force me to choose only one of those roles, but enabled me to better discern the mechanisms that function behind them, and thus to see more precisely their weaknesses and strengths.
4.
I'm not talking about identity here, because the choice of identity is not what ultimately, if I'm not mistaken, defines a writer. What defines him is his language and his style. Identiet - understood here as that which identifies the individual with the wider community to which he belongs - need not play any role in creation. A writer can, for example, feel like a Serb or a Jew, without any of that entering the prose or poetry he writes. Kafka is a convenient example: if we say that he was a Jew who wrote in Prague in the German language, where do we classify him? To German literature, to which it belongs by choice of language; in the Czech Republic, to which it belongs by place; or to the Jewish one, to which it belongs by origin? There are those who believe that it is precisely his style - which is allegedly based on imitating the Talmudic script - that defines him as a Jewish writer, although almost nothing in his prose indicates a Jewish content. Others will insist that the Prague setting is what makes Kafka Kafka, while the linguistic threads that connect him to German literature will be the decisive factor for those who consider him a German writer. Perhaps the best answer is that Kafka is all that, but also something more: that he is, in fact, a writer without borders, a multicultural writer, in the best sense of the word, who transcends any limitation that identity, language or national tradition may impose.
5.
Borders, of course, regardless of how we define them, encourage discussion about belonging, even in a situation where, for example, the writer tries to live on the border itself, trying to avoid any declaration of belonging to one side or the other. Many, however, will not allow him to do so and will deny his right to be what he wants. Literature, they say, arises precisely from the feeling of belonging, and that is the only thing that counts. And the language? Isn't language the only real belonging of the writer, given that the world he creates exists only in language and nowhere else? When, for example, kundera he writes in french, is he a czech or french writer? And when Skvorecki, who is a Canadian citizen, writes in Czech, is he an ethnic Canadian writer, surviving thanks to the politics of multiculturalism, or a Czech writer who no longer wants to return home? Seemingly different questions that reflect the same situation: all these writers are located in the erased space between different worlds, in the borderlands between languages, literary history and political systems. And they all survive precisely because they do not recognize borders.
6.
Another thought comes to my mind: that they all survive because their writing - perhaps not completely, but certainly in part - is a reflection of longing for what they are not, for what they could be if they first recognized the limits and then crossed them. through them.
7.
Of course, borders are much more noticeable when they are marked by a difference in languages, than when - as is most often the case with the Jewish community - this difference does not exist. Moving, for example, from a Jewish environment to a Serbian environment does not require a change of language, so there is no real feeling of moving from one "territory" to another. Belonging to the language is the same in both "territories" and differences - because differences, like it or not, always exist - must be sought elsewhere.
8.
We find similar elements in the writers who were forced - or decided on their own - to live in exile. Again we have the crossing of cultures and a possible clash of languages, with nostalgia playing an extremely important role in the exile situation. Political and ideological aspects also have a significant place, which often completely suppress the much more crucial questions about language, style and the mixing of cultures for literature. In the end, it seems that exile is not such a specter for writers after all, because regardless of popular myths about life in exile, most writers come out victorious from their confrontation with the fate of exile. Success Isak Bashevis Singer, Vladimir Nabokov, Josif Brodsky, Česlav Miloš, Vitold Gombrović i Julio Cortasar, for example, irrefutably confirms this.
9.
Life in a multicultural society can, therefore, give a writer - more precisely: a person who does not yet know that he will become a writer - insights and understandings that can decisively influence his writing poetics. It is also possible that this life will lead him in the opposite direction: to turn into an advocate of borders, divisions and various spiritual and moral "purities", because the existence of a multicultural society does not automatically mean that that society has left behind all the negative aspects of the common of living. The example of the former Yugoslav multicultural community shows how easily the positive features of a mixed society can be changed into negative representations and misused for various political or nationalist goals. A Jew who now grows up in Serbia, and who very often encounters expressions of open hatred towards Jews, will most certainly develop a different image of multiculturalism than those Jews who, like me, grew up in the fifties and sixties, when such phenomena were very rare. . And while I, with my memories and thanks to the fact that I live far away from there, show a willingness to understand and to some extent justify it, a young Jew in Serbia probably doubts more and more about the possibility of multicultural living and feels fears and anxieties that I was spared. Where I saw no boundaries, he (or she) may see impenetrable walls.
10.
The last ten years, which I have spent far from Zemun, have not changed anything in the picture that I casually sketched in the previous fragments. One of the reasons for that should certainly be found in the fact that in the new environment I did not even try to become a part of its literature and culture. Had I tried that, I have no doubt that - despite the official multiculturalism here - I would have faced tighter and harsher boundaries than those I occasionally encountered in my old environment. Admittedly, those would be, if I should call them that, guild borders, warnings that I am entering someone else's territory, that - especially since I do not write in any of the official languages - I am still an intruder, but borders are borders and they make me feel sick, regardless where they come from. Therefore, I chose to play the role of a disinterested guest, a role that allows me to move freely through yet another culture without bringing me into any conflict with those who already inhabit it. Thus, my original cultural area has remained unchanged, although I dwell in it much more in dreams and fantasies than in reality. However, it was the distance that allowed me to see how much I owe to the Yugoslav mixture of cultures in which I grew up, especially the interplay of Serbian and Jewish culture. Since that mixture is no longer there, and I refuse to give it up, it is no wonder that I feel like a castaway to whom no land seems entirely safe. I sit on a raft and send messages in bottles. The sea is sometimes turbulent, sometimes calm, never completely reliable, but one thing is certain: it never recognizes borders.
Sarajevo Volumes no. 03; https://sveske.ba/en/content/granice
Bonus video:
