Migrations by Miloš Crnjanski ( although it is spelt on my cover Tsernianski)
Serbian fiction
Original title – Seobe
Translator – Michael Henry-Heim
Source – Personal copy
One of my goals for this year was to read more classics and Modern classics from around the world, what with the Booker International it has drifted off, but I will try to feature more books like this that are out of print but are essential in their countries’ Canon, like this book by the Serbian Modernist writer. Miloš Crnjanski was considered one of the leading exponents of Expressionism in his writing. His early books, like this, Dealt with Serbia and its Historic past. This book follows two brothers through the years and struggles as one of them fights for a brigade in the Austro-Hungarian army. However, as they do, they start to dream.
A crowd had gathered near the stables and the sty to await his arrival, but even more to await the coach and horses and servants of his brother, Arandjel Isakovic, a merchant known throughout the Danube and Tisza basin for his wealth.
According to their agreement, his brother was to spend the night in the village with the children and rise early to be with him when he took leave of his wife, whose violent ways both men feared. And indeed, just as he reached the top of the hill, his brother’s large brightly painted coach came into view and was immediately surrounded by servants.
By this time the rain had ceased, the sky had cleared.
Entering the hut, the man bumped his head on the thatched roof. He found his wife freshly washed, dressed in silk, beautiful. Tired from the strenuous ride, he looked at her in a new light. He went to her and started kissing her through
As Vuk heads out to the war
This book is set in the 1740s, but in a way has a feel for the time, a decade or so after World War I, when it was written it sees the birth of the Austro Hungarian Empire and the first parts of the Ottoman falling a[art as we see tw brother Vuk he is the brother in the Army as an Officers his brother Arandjel who has followed his brother well more his wife and his daughters this brother is a successful merchant and provides a lot for his brother and his wife Dafina. The brothers both have a connection to her, one as husband, the other as his mistress, bewitched by her beauty. The book is set during the war, but it isn’t so much about the great battles as it is about being in the camps, being bored as a wife, and following her husband from battle to battle. It also explores the idea of a greater Serbia among the troops as they fight in France. As the three of them face who they are, where they are from, and what lies ahead for them all after these twisted connections between them, Alos, it is about love and loss and about honour and family.
This was the house in which Vuk Isakovic had chosen to lodge his wife and two girls, who arrived in a coach loaded down with clothes, furs, carpets, pearl brooches, silver buttons, and the like, and accompanied by a crowd of loudly lamenting women and aging servants.
Though younger than his brother, Arandjel Isakovic treated Vuk as if he were the younger. Whenever he stood next to him, he gave him pitying looks; whenever he sat next to him, he made sure Vuk had the more comfortable seat, though he himself was thin as a rail and his brother round as a barrel; and whenever his brother spoke to him, he smiled, avoided his glance, and paused before responding.
His brother provides for them but also has his wife as his mistress !
As I said, the themes of this book revolve around the culture and identity of the various states in the Balkans. In this particular case, it is Serbia, and in the book, it drifts between the two great empires of the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian, which is just starting a few years after this book is set, as the vacuum between those two led to the dream of a great Serbia. However, the book also has echoes of the post-World War I era, which is the time in which the book was written, in the late twenties, and even extends to the recent Balkan war in the 1990s. Add to that the other thread of the relationship between the brothers and the wife, and how that triangle acts out. The book also explores the feeling of never being in the right place, as well as the question of Migration, which remains a highly newsworthy topic today. Still, it isn’t a Serbian; it is someone from sub-Saharan Africa or the war-torn Middle East, on the lookout for a new place and a dream of a different world. I liked this book; it is one of those books whose themes have a timeless quality, focusing on family, love, and passion. Of Nationhood and place, of migration and belonging, all these questions are still there, nearly a hundred years after this book was written! Have you read this book?
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