I’m hoping to see and hear you at the annual marathon reading of “Song of Myself” on Sunday, September 26!  It’ll be the seventh time we declare Whitman’s all-embracing lines from the deck of the barque Peking and over the East River, sailing them from Mannahattta to his beloved Brooklyn.

You don’t have to read to participate– but if you’d like to, please email or call Christine Modica with your top three sections (using the 1891-1892 edition’s breakdown).  She’ll assign the sections on a first come, first serve basis.

The reading will begin at 3:00 aboard the tall ship Peking, located on Pier 16 at the South Street Seaport.  If you do decide to participate, please arrive no later than 2:30. Check in will be located on Pier 16 near the forward gangway of Peking.  If you need to arrive later, please let Christine know when to expect you.  All readers will be admitted to the event for free, as will Seaport Museum members. Guest admission to the event is $5.

Christine’s email:   cmodica at seany.org
and phone: 212-748-8738

Here’s a photo slideshow of last year’s buoyant reading:

http://karbiener.lookingforwhitman.org/page/2/

Looking forward to celebrating Whitman’s spirit with you!

Karen

–If you would understand me go to the heights or water-shore,
The nearest gnat is an explanation, and a drop or motion of waves key,
The maul, the oar, the hand-saw, second my words.

My participation in the NEH-funded “Looking for Whitman” project enabled me to introduce my Serbian students to Whitman as a poet of global reputation and application, and also connected them to other students in Whitman seminars across the US.  Grant funds provided for the introduction of new technologies in our classroom, ensuring that each student would have access to a Flipcam as well as a specially trained assistant (our own beloved Dragan Babic, a senior at the University of Novi Sad).  As a way of encouraging their use of these resources as well as their creativity, I asked each student to design a “cinepoem” that would both verbally and visually represent the translation he or she had composed as part of their final project.  Though all of them worked through frequent internet outages, some were subject to the availability of public computers, and none of them had ever seen a Flipcam before, they each mastered the technology and produced surprisingly professional—and moving—short films.  All of their efforts are viewable on our “Video Map” at http://unovisad.lookingforwhitman.org.

Each of these videos is quite different in style and tone, though they all seem to combine the makers’ deep-rooted love of their country with their new passion for Whitman.  Neda found new freedom of expression in the video mode, as her provocative (even sexy) interpretation of “Calamus 11” demonstrates.  Josip kept the imagery simple and straightforward, preferring to let his translation of “Calamus 6” speak for itself.  Sanja’s visual interpretation of “Calamus 9” invites contemplation, while  Bojana’s setting of the same poem is a Whitmanic celebration of Belgrade, her beloved hometown.  Indira’s translation of “Calamus 22” is recited by a wonderful collective of Serbs young and old (including her toothless grandfather), creating a video montage of overwhelming emotional impact.  And Elma, a resident of beautiful war-torn Sarajevo who commuted seven hours to our class each week, offered a powerful raison d’etre for poetry: it keeps us burning.  Images of Sarajevo’s “eternal flame” segue to Elma’s candlelit reading of “Calamus 9.”

Can poetry matter?  As part of their final project, I asked my students to respond to Dana Gioia’s controversial 1992 essay.  Each of the recent poetry converts gave a well-reasoned and enthusiastic affirmative response, and I found myself happily nodding along with them.  Poetry really does matter, as I witnessed firsthand bringing Walt Whitman to Serbia.  He sounds as true, beautiful, and useful in the Balkans as he does on my own Brooklyn Bridge.  Walt, wherever you are, it must do your heart good to know that we’re all still listening, still learning.

You, where you are!
You daughter or son of England!
You of the mighty Slavic tribes and empires! You Russ in Russia!…
All you continents of Asia, Africa, Europe, Australia, indifferent of place!
All you on the numberless islands of the archipelagoes of the sea!
And you of centuries hence, when you listen to me!
And you, each and everywhere, whom I specify not, but include just the same!
Health to you!  Good will to you all—from me and America sent,
For we acknowledge you all and each.
(from “Salut Au Monde!”, 1860)

Hey Walt! –did you ever consider how fluid and strong and beautiful all of these words would sound… in Serbian?

Sati protiču dugi, mučni i teški,

Sati u suton, kada se povlačim na neko osamljeno i

Pusto mjesto, sjedam, naslanjajući lice na ruke…

That is Elma Porobic’s stunning translation of the first lines of Calamus 9.  Those of you who can read Serbian will not just note her sensitive treatment of Whitman’s language, but her ear for his music.  Elma is one of my six students in “Walt Whitman: The Global Perspective”, and one of three that have chosen to absorb, translate, and interpret Calamus 9 as her final project.  Sanja Stanimirovic offers a different perspective on Whitman’s emotional opening:

Sati teku dugi, bolni i tegobni,

Sati u sumrak, kada se povlačim na neko samotno mesto, retko pohođeno, sedam i zarivam

lice u šake…

And then we have Bojana Acamovic’s nuanced reading:

Sati teku dugi, bolni, nesrećni,

Sati sutona, kada se povlačim na usamljeno i pusto mesto, kada sedam, spuštam lice u šake…

Indira Janic brings another level of meaning to Calamus 22 (later “To a Stranger”) by interpreting him using the Cyrillic alphabet:

Странче у пролазу! Ти не знаш колико те чежљиво гледам…

Neda Kosoric has diligently labored to resolve interesting questions regarding the use of gender in Serbian, in her translation of Calamus 11:

…i njegova ruka lagano prebacena preko mojih grudi,

i te noci ja bio sam srecan.

And Josip brings passion and intensity to Calamus 6 as he continues to try to wrestle down a Serbian word for a distinctively Whitmanic term:

Ne s bilo kim niti sa svima, O adhesiveness! O bȉlo mog života!

Potrebno mi je da postojiš i prikazuješ se, više no u ovim pesmama.

Dragan Purešić,, Karen, Indra, Sanja, Neda, Bojana, and Elma: united we Whitmaniacs stand!

On Saturday 12 December, we were honored to welcome the esteemed translator Dragan Purešić to our classroom at the University of Novi Sad.  In addition to his crucial contributions to the success of the Serbian Book Market Project (see http://www.ceebp.org/book-market.htm for more info), Dragan has published noteworthy translations of the works of William Blake (Belgrade: Plato, 2007) as well as Walt Whitman (Belgrade: Plato, 2008).  He presented us with a memorable lecture on the art of translation, describing some of the challenges he faced when interpreting Whitman’s words for the Serbian people.  ”The poem is an artistic entity,” he reminded us.  ”The translator is both an artist and an artisan.”  Quoting freely and fluidly from works as wide-ranging as Lessing’s “Laocoon” and “The Godfather Part III”, he charged us with the significance and the perils of our task at hand.  And he inspired us.  ”Blessed be the messengers,” he said.  Whitman sounds really good, really true and beautiful, in Serbian.

Ringed round by Dragans: Whitman's women (don't forget Indira, behind the lens!)

Dragan then led a translation workshop (which was further enhanced by the contribution of Novi Sad faculty members Vladislava Gordic Petkovic, Ivana Djuric, and Aleksandra Izgarjan).  We pored over Whitman’s language: what’s the connotative difference between being “content” and “happy”, as we see these terms used in Calamus 9 and 11?  What is behind the unusual statement “I am to wait” at the end of Calamus 22, and how can one achieve that feeling in Serbian?  And when Whitman asks, “I wonder if other men ever have the like” (Calamus 9), does the use of  the idea of  ’mankind’ deny the poem’s true meaning or enhance its applicability?  Dragan offered suggestions and asked thoughtful questions of all of us; all of us responded and questioned our own understandings of Whitman’s words and intentions.

We strolled out of Classroom 37 three hours later, with full hearts and minds.  You see, Dragan knows Walt Whitman.   He ‘gets’ the poet in a fluid and intuitive way, in addition to possessing a finessed scholarly knowledge of  Whitman’s life and work.  And Dragan communicated his love and understanding for Whitman to us with honesty and passion, encouraging and helping shape our responses to these elusive Calamus poems.

In a few weeks, you will be able to listen to my students’ final versions of their Calamus translations on our “video map” (just go to “Video Map” on top of our class website– http://unovisad.lookingforwhitman.org– and swing the pointer a bit east of Walt’s usual stomping-grounds).  You, too, will be able to enjoy the benefits of Dragan’s sensitive tutelage– as channeled by this outstanding, unforgettable collective of new Serbian Whitmaniacs.

Hvala, Dragan! Vidimo se, Josip, Indira, Elma, Bojana, Sanja, Neda and faithful right-hand man Dragan!

…I ostavlja vama da dokazujete i određujete,

I glavne stvari očekuje od vas.

(the rousing challenge of “Poets to Come”, as delivered by Walt Whitman and Dragan Purešić)

One of our family's treasures is this rare photo of my father and Inge, taken before the onset of Tito's expulsion campaigns in 1944.

21 November 2009.

All day long I walked around thinking that this was the anniversary of Daddy’s death.  I lit a candle for him in the Serbian Orthodox Church in Zrenanin, and told Aleksandra’s mother (who had made some vanille krenzen for a lavish St. Michael’s Day feast I was treated to today) that these were my father’s favorite cookies, that he would be pleased to see (even more to eat) them.  I just called my friend Jackie Gardy to tell her no, I wouldn’t be able to come to the Novi Sad Jazz Festival tonight, that I wasn’t up to it.  You see, seven years ago, I lost my beloved dad.  His end was sudden and quick, the result of a brain anheurism and, undoubtedly, more than a lifetime of trauma and hard work.  In 2002, November 22 became the most difficult day imaginable.  And every year on this date, I allow myself to be engulfed by floods of memories and emotions.  November 22 marks my counter-celebration of self-pity and grief.

Well, November 22 is tomorrow.

I only realized that when I looked at my calendar a moment ago.  Today’s the twenty-FIRST, not the twenty-SECOND, of November.  So that call to my mom, and the drama of thinking about my father on this heaviest of days, could wait another day.

But it felt like today, like today was connected with that other day in 2002 when I last spoke to my father in person and when I had angry words with a thoughtless, disconnected doctor in Glen Cove Hospital, about disconnecting my father from life support.  Such a strange day.  I was teaching at Colby College at the time, and had flown down from Maine to New York the day before, at my sister’s request.  Dutifully teaching my last pre-Thanksgiving classes and giving my students assignments for the break, I drove to Portland Airport in a daze.  When the fog lifted, I was holding my father’s hand in the hospital and thinking about what I needed to tell him.

I will write the story, Daddy.  I promise.

And then blurriness and hospital smell, and then Tante Inge’s arrival and then waiting.  And then hope and then not.  And then blankness.

My father is the reason that I am writing to you from Serbia.  He, along with my great-grandfather, are my loving courage-teachers, my representatives of what the best of us can aspire to be.  Philipp Karbiener (or, as his birth record reads, Филип Михаел КАРБИНЕР) was the first son born to one of the wealthiest households in Sekitsch, Yugoslavia in 1935.  His grandfather, who had served as the mayor of Sekitsch and had  expanded the family’s properties and wealth, saw more potential in the steady gaze of his grandson (see photo above) than in the boy’s father.  From an early age, my dad had received tutelage on land and agricultural management; by age nine, he was a skilled horseman who could gentle-break the wildest stallion on any of the family’s four farms.

He was nine years old, too, when he was expelled from his home and placed in the first of four detention camps set up by Tito for the ethnic Germans of Vojvodina.  His father, sister, grandparents and Onkel Philipp (my grandmother’s brother) all went with him, while his mother was sent to a forced labor camp outside of Luhansk, Ukraine.

My dad became the head of the family in these camps.  His father was stultefied by the displacement, and was physically and mentally useless—a mere shell of a man.  Inge was a hysterical four year old.  And his grandfather once again reached over his 33-year old son to grab the boy’s skinny shoulders.  The inheritance was lost, but Philipp still represented hope and the future.  Blue steely-eyed gaze met gaze.  You are in charge now.  You take care of your sister, your father.

And so the boy did.  Sneaking out of Camp Gakowa to work for Hungarian farmers, he carried salt, potatoes, and corn back under the barbed-wire fence to feed his little sister, his sullen father, his sickly grandparents.  Philipp declined offers of free passage over the Hungarian border by the farmer’s son—a border patrol officer—so that he could continue his missions in and out of the camp.  He was eleven, going on twelve.

He even got caught one time.  The Red Army guards at Gakowa were known for their particularly cruel punishments, such as making rule violators stare at the sun to the point of blindness.  My father’s sentence was comparatively light: he was sent to the basement of an abandoned farmhouse flooded with water.  Seating him on an uneven stool in the brine, the guards ordered that he stay there all night—and that he sing loudly, so they’d know he was down there.  My dad defiantly blared a steady stream of Lutheran hymns and German folk songs, much to the soldiers’ disgust.   But Daddy ultimately suffered the most from this incident.  He never sang again.  Though he loved to hear my sister and I croon nursery rhymes or Christmas songs, he never mustered the will to chime in.

When Tito’s camps were dissolved in May 1948, my father, aunt, and grandfather were sent to work on a ”community farm.”  Whether by the cruelty of fate or Tito’s envoys, they were placed on one of their own salasches: Szenttamas salas, just outside of Srbobran.  It had been the largest of their land holdings, and had been registered under my father’s name before he could read its ‘katasatar’ number in the Srbobran Grundbuch.   On its 150 acres stood a horse stable, barn for milk cows, ”magazin” for corn and grain products, a long manager’s house, and a large farm house complete with cellar and ’summer kitchen.’

Four years after the family’s last visit to this salas, the meticulously kept fields of wheat and corn were now overgrown with weeds.  Hundreds of  farm horses had been set free and now roamed wild, their hoofbeats echoing over the Vojvodina plains through the night.  Foxes darted throught he doorless portals of the farmhouse, which was partially occupied by a group of Roma.  My grandfather saw the lice on the women’s long hair and ordered his children to sleep outside on the porch.  Conditions were so poor that he decided to try and find a foster home for Inge, now barely eight years old.  As he wandered through the burnt-out villages in search of someone to take her in, my 13-year old father went looking for work in the neighboring fields.

He first found work on the sheep farm of Pero Milotic, just outside of Srbobran.  They were good to him, though he soon realized that his skills as a horseman might be better utilized on a bigger farm.  Pajo and Radinka Gavanski of Srbobran offered him a job breaking in horses on their salas.  He liked the work and excelled at it; Radinka felt compassion for the pitifully skinny boy and, perhaps, admired his sense of responsibility towards work and family.  Her generosity towards my father is part of our family lore.  For a good year or so, he benefitted immeasurably from her gifts of food, shelter, and human kindness.  I like to think that they provided each other with some basic needs in a time of crisis: a son’s devotion, a mother’s love.

Spending 22 November as well as Thanksgiving in Serbia without my family this year, I decided to combine these two landmark dates in one mission: to locate some of the several people that enabled my father’s survival, and to thank them personally for their priceless gift to us.

I called my friend Slobodan Jovn, who runs a cab company in Novi Sad (Heligon Taxi: 064 232 0816).  Was he up for another ‘research adventure’, to Srbobran this time? ”No problem.”  (He always says that.)  We sped off from Novi Sad at 9 am on Friday morning, a thick fog setting the perfrect mood for our detective work.

Srbobran has preserved its majestic center, a cluster of grand Austro-Hungarian structures around its high-baroque, double-spired cathedral.  One of these is the Registrar’s Office, where a clerk named Stefanka remains Srbobran’s walking, talking town record.  She listened to Slobodon’s translation of my request.  Pero Milotic?  No, she was drawing a blank with that name.  Radinka Gowanski? (she looked at my Germanized spelling.  Serbs don’t use ‘w’s.)  Hm.  Radinka Gavanski?  Radinka?  She opened a huge metal file cabinet, pulled down several oversized books, and began to look through the town records.  And then the death records.  Looking over her glasses at her fellow worker (Zita; of course we’re all on a first-name basis), she asked her to call the police station.  And then she took out the well-thumbed mountains of citizenship records.  I watched helplessly, trying to distract myself with the view of the town’s ‘wedding room’ next door, with its grand chandelier and dark wooden panelling.  The enormously high ceilings (15 feet, at least) and grand décor must make young couples feel the momentousness of the occasion.  Turning back around to Stefanka’s office, I noted how much smaller it was, despite the amount of information contained in the room.  Her filing system had had to expand upward rather than outward, utilizing unreachable wall space far above our heads.

About forty minutes later, Stefanka paused over  a worn blue index card.  Radinka Gavanski.  30 September 1925- 21 December 2002.  She lived at 73 Petra Drapsina even after her husband died and the salas lands had been sold.  And though she had been childless, someone had come in to the police station to report her death— Rajko Pivncki, presumably her brother.  Sarplaninska 46 in Novi Sad, of all places.  We could look him up in the phone book.

The sadness of realizing that I was too late to thank Radinka in person, was eased by the fact that I might be able to thank her through a visit to another family member—and by way of a visit to the house where she and my father had developed their special friendship.  Families don’t live on their salasi in Vojvodina; they might stay temporarily as an escape from a more urban existence, but their everyday lives were always conducted from their homes in town.  The house at 73 Petra Drapsina was thus the place my father would have shared his meals with the Gavanskis, where he slept to escape the cold of the windowless Szentatamas salas, where he found an open door and a warm hearth in an otherwise cold and closed world.

We walked right in to a humble but welcoming courtyard.  And there was something magical about this place, as careworn and tired as the house and garden looked.  Perfect stillness greeted us—this, despite the healthy flock of chickens and geese in the backyard coop. Beets stewed quietly on a table near the front door.  Late tomatoes hung sleepily from the vine.  A quince lay perfectly split in half, knife by its side, on an old table against the back barn.  Smoke rose gently from a little stove pipe on the roof.  A child’s socks danced on the clothesline.  A pair of women’s clogs rested on the front stoop.  And the lace-curtained front door was open, inviting us inside.

At first, Slobodan and I shouted our ”dobar dan’’s around the house and into it.  But gradually we too succumbed to the absolute peace of this scene.  While he noted the old mud construction of parts of the outbuildings, I envisioned my father as the thirteen year old boy who had also enjoyed this simple, pleasing garden.  After enduring four years of near-starvation, exhaustive labor, and humiliation at the hands of his captors, my father had been offered comfort and affection in Radinka’s humble home.

...Radinka, are you there? Spirits from the past linger in the corners of her former backyard.

As we walked out, we saw an old woman emerge from her own gate next door.  Yes, of course she remembered Radinka.  An open-hearted person, a good neighbor.  They lived next door to each other for well over 50 years before Radinka died.  Now there were Bosnian refugees living in the house.  She didn’t know much about them, they kept to themselves.

Radinka’s house, then, opened its doors to many different needy people at points of crisis.  To my  13 year old father, in the wake of a traumatic separation from his mother, displacement from his home, and survival of a brutal ‘ethnic cleaning’ of the Vojvodina Germans.  To the Bosnian refugees, who now seek asylum after a horrific period of religious persecution and genocide in their homeland.  And to me.  Though my suffering cannot be compared with these two examples, I too have been given sustenance during a difficult moment of loss.  Radinka helped me recover my father, understand this complex, loving man better, love him all the more.

How can I begin to thank such people?  Where, in my bounded vocabulary, can I find the words to describe how grateful I am to Radinka, ‘working woman’ who found it in her heart to be generous to others when most people felt forced to think only of themselves? How can I help commemmorate these everyday heroes that refuse to let the status quo of the moment dictate their own actions?

I can start here and now.  We are all so very responsible for what we do, no matter what we have led ourselves to believe, no matter how others have sworn they forgive us, they understand.   All our decisions, great or small, indicate our mettle.  Will you help the homeless man carry his bags up those steep stairs to the 125th St. 1/9?  Do you take in the blue-eyed boy, though he’s a living embodiment of ‘the enemy’ to people in power?  Will I find and thank the surviving members of a family that gave my dad life and love?

This Thursday, Aleksandra and I are planning to spend part of Thanksgiving at a nursing home.  Rajko Picncki, it turns out, sold his house at Sarplaninska 46 and now resides in one of several such facilites in the Novi Sad area (the guy living in his house right now didn’t know which one).  On Tuesday, we’ll be making calls to the list of nursing homes we’ve compiled, hoping to track Rajko down.  And then, after a baking marathon (vanille krenzen, maybe), we’ll offer our thanks to Rajko and the memory of his sister Radinka.

Thanks, Daddy.  For everything. Love always.

The trio enjoying the fruits of my father's harvest on the threshold of his former house in Sekitsch (now Lovcenac), Vojvodina.

My cousins Lisa and Michelle came to visit me for a few days last week.

–Very nice, you say.  Been there, done that.  Don’t families just do this sort of thing?

What if I told you that they left their families and busy schedules in Chicago and the Philadelphia area, respectively, to visit me here in Serbia?  That they’ve never been here before, and that they don’t know another living soul besides me who lives in this part of the world?  And that  they’re not exactly my cousins in the strict definition of the term?

Michelle and Lisa came here on a mission motivated by love.  Though we’re only distant blood relations (their grandmother and mine were first cousins), we’re bonded by history, our devoted interest in the story of our family, and a time-honored friendship.  Michelle’s father Helmut (godfather to both Lisa and myself), Lisa’s dad Ewald (much-beloved Onkel to Michelle and me), and my father Phillipp (their late ‘Onkel Phil’) were all part of the last generation of Karbieners/Karbiners born in the Vojvodina town of Sekitsch.  The family lines had remained in this small town from 1786 to 1944, when the ethnic German residents of Vojvodina were expelled from their homes.  Homeless and homelandless, our family was torn apart by physical separation, forced labor, disease, starvation, and torture.  Surviving against all odds, these young men and their parents eventually emigrated to America (Helmut and Ewald in 1950, my father in 1955) with little more than a vision of a bright future there.

Though they had lost nearly all of their worldly possessions and now faced a challenging reassessment of their cultural identity, surviving Danube-Swabians quickly tried to re-establish what had always been at the core of their communities: family and the bonds of friendship.  The new American émigrés were only too happy to find each other alive and well, and took comfort in settling within close proximity of each other in the Ridgewood/Glendale/Middle Village straddling Brooklyn and Queens.  Families lived together (my grandparents, for example, lived in the apartment below ours) and worked together at knitting mills and meat-packing plants, like Tru-Fit and Merkel’s in Brooklyn.  And when we firstborns came along, we too developed bonds and friendships while frequenting the German-Hungarian Soccer Club, Niederstein’s, Plattdeutsche Park Restaurant, and of course our own elaborate house parties.  Now that I have been living in Vojvodina for a few months, I see that our parents tried to surround us with the comforts they had known ‘back home,’ particularly the food: cremebitte, bundt cakes, dobosch tortes, and apfel strudel were among the treats served at our birthdays (though all we kids really wanted was a Carvel cake).

As the American-Donauschwaben families grew and prospered, many of us moved out of the ‘old’ neighborhoods.  But though the branches grew upward and outward, the roots remain strong. Every time my mother checks up on the old house (which we now rent), she returns vowing that she’ll move back to Middle Village one day.  Our family patriarch Onkel Ludwig still takes his daily walk on Metropolitan Avenue; he’s even found some comfort in the apple strudel and cute waitresses of the Arby’s that replaced Niederstein’s.  And all those parties and gatherings that we firstborns were obliged to attend, have secured lifelong bonds and precious friendships.  Michelle, Lisa, and I—all bossy older siblings that loved school, hated boys (for a while, anyway), and benefited from the unconditional love and support of fathers–  are bonded by our respect for our shared history and our dedication to family.  And in our own 21^st century American way, we carry forth the Danube-Swabian sense of community that held the lot of us together for over 150 years.

Which may help explain why these accomplished, dynamic, busy women decided to put their everyday lives on hold to visit me in Vojvodina— and to journey into our family’s past.  It was not an easy trip for either of them, in any sense.  For starters, it’s a long way from Chicago and Phillie to Novi Sad.  Lisa’s fabulous husband Mike, perhaps rightly so, worried about security issues enough to get her an international cell phone.  Michelle’s adorable and adoring son Leighton and daughter Sabine missed their mom, particularly because she wouldn’t be there to see their Halloween costumes.  And then there were the many political, psychological, and emotional issues we all faced, returning to the place that had expelled our family.  Sixty five years ago, our families had been forced to surrender our homes and land.  Many were placed in detention and forced-labor camps, and some were tortured and killed by people who might still be living in the area.  Just what sort of welcome could we expect?  And how would the modern-day residents of Lovcenac feel when they found out we wanted to see the houses our fathers were born, the vineyards and farms that they owned, the homeland that they still cherish?  In Serbia, the forced expellations of ethnic Germans after World War II has remained a closed topic until the last few years; currently, the issue of war reparations issue further complicates the matter.

Lovcenac 2009: remnants of the tree-lined streets of Sekitsch (this is Zweiterreihe, now ЂУРА СТРУГАРА, with the house my father grew up in lying just beyond the corner house).

A doorway into the past of present-day Lovcenac.

Smiles broke out around the room when we saw the record of the birth of their grandfather, my Onkel Ludwig, in 1915.  “He’s still alive!”  I exclaimed to Stanka, forgetting that she didn’t know a word of English.  “Really alive!”  Lisa rejoined, and we analyzed the slight hand that had written in what we saw as a momentous occasion: the birth of our family patriarch.   Born in Austria-Hungary, Ludwig was officially recorded under the Hungarian name Lajos (“lye-oash”).   His son Ewald, Lisa’s dad, was also recorded in Hungarian in 1942—and to see the elaborate Hungarian headings and political symbolism was to feel the pressure of those times.  During World War II, Vojvodina was divided and occupied by the Axis Powers, and Sekitsch had officially been part of Hungary again.  And yet in 1935, my father had been born in Sektisch in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia.  The Cyrillic writing on his birth record served as proof.

My father's birth record, written out in Serbian Cyrillic. It's the first time I've seen it (and realized he had a middle name).

The birth record of Michelle's father, written in Cyrillic. Helmut would have been 70 the week we visited his hometown.

Mich noting the vineyard-inspired carvings on the facades of Kula Er Gasse.

An example of a dolled-up 'German house' on the corner of old Kula Er Gasse and Maximiliangasse.

Perhaps we should have been more nervous.  But the walnut trees seemed to protect us with their mellow, yellow leaves, and the air was fresh with the fragrance of quince.  ”Good morning,” piped a young boy from across the street—obviously practising his English, since it was four in the afternoon.  Walking down this wide street, I felt a sense of peace, of familiarity.  Though I’m a city girl (like my Oma) at heart, I understood at that moment the sense of contentment that small town life must have brought to my ancestors.

”There it is!” The house, like Ludwig himself, was a quiet but sure standout.  The only building to face the Kula Er Gasse at an angle, it seemed to look at us curiously out of the corner of its eye, over its shoulder.  ”Izvolite?”

It was an older Monte Negrian man, actually, who now addressed us.  Somehow, in a motley combination of stunted Serbian, botched German, and desperate English words and gestures, we communicated that this house was the birthplace of their dads, that their grandfather had lived here.  Well, would we like to go in and see it?  He knew the owner.  Zlata.  Very nice.  She’d be pleased to show us the house.

And so the old door opened.  Black-haired Zlata in a bright red t-shirt greeted us with unabashed enthusiasm; her assortment of dogs, with more trepidation, maybe because we were eyeing them so closely.  I knew what Mich and Lisa were thinking: Helmut and Ewald had a dachshund growing up.  Had the dogs remained after their families were expelled?  I remembered Inge’s stories of her own little dog, that tried so desperately to follow her as she and her brother were carted off to the camp at Gakowa.  One of the Russian officers had kicked the dog to the side.

Who knows?  Dogs are survivors too—and one of these little guys did look like he could have a bit of dachshund fierceness and longitude in him.  In any case, the apple trees were certainly living descendents.  As Michelle and Lisa explored the spacious backyard and fields beyond, Zlata ran inside and brought out what must have been the three biggest fruits of the harvest.  For us.

Stepping back in time: Michelle and Lisa are invited (back) into their fathers' brithplace!

We were then escorted inside the simple stone house,.  Michelle and Lisa’s delight and exclamations provoked Zlata to give us a full house tour, and we found the dark hallways opened to bright, warm rooms.  In the living room, we caught each other’s eyes as we marked the presence of the old stove.  Ljiljana Ljustanovic had told us that when many of the Monte Negrian families had moved into these houses, they didn’t know what to make of the elaborately tiled German stoves.  Thinking that these tall objects were perhaps monuments, they destroyed most of them.  But here stood the very stove that had warmed the winters of Ludwig, Gretchen, Helmut and Ewald.  Now we, too, felt the glowing warmth that they had experienced.  And that felt indescribably good.

In the photo below, you’re looking at four women who, in the simple gesture of a group hug, are breaking through formidable and time-honored boundaries.  Here you see the Monte Negrian and the Danube-Swabian united by mutual understanding and respect, despite our radically divisive history.  You see the realized possibility of reconnecting with the so-called ‘lost’ past or the ‘dead and gone.’  And in this very moment, you see the future of three cousins—one that is all the brighter for the bonds that have grown stronger, the hearts that now beat bigger.

Thank you, Lisa and Michelle for the experience of a lifetime—of many lifetimes.

I actually saw what he meant when Aleksandra, Alphild and I took our first look around Salas 137, one of the several Vojvodina “farm-estates” now more devoted to entertaining tourists than harvesting wheat and corn.

Salas 137 attempts to portray a type of existence that my family knew and loved for a century and a half, though it is lost to us now.  My father, along with his parents, grandparents, and everyone else in the Vojvodina village of Sekitsch (now Lovcenac), were expelled from their homes, dispossessed of their properties, and put into death- and work-camps at the end of 1944.   After nearly eight years of suffering, sickness, the experience of watching others tortured, killed, or die of starvation, my father, his sister, and their father were reunited with my grandmother (who had been working in a coal mine in a forced-labor camp in the Ukraine, near Luhansk).  Homeless and homeland-less, my Oma decided for them all: “America is the future.”  On the 17 of December 1955, they caught their first glimpse of the Statue of Liberty.

And my father never wanted to look back—never even wanted to tell his daughters about what he had been through, what had been lost and left behind.  He loved America with a fierceness that was eye-roll-worthy to my sister and me when we were younger.  He seemed content with the fact that he had a precious few family photos from his own youth, and no tokens or trinkets or papers that linked him to another place or time.  I’m as sure that his disinterest in our family history inspired my own stubborn interest in that subject, as I am certain that his allegiance to New York led me to my own dedication to our hometown, the greatest city on earth.

But traces of the past remain.  Wounds heal, but leave their mark.  And the proud new resident of Brooklyn, New York—the twenty-year-old city boy who worked in a meat factory and lived in a railroad flat—couldn’t shake his passion for horses.  Before I learned to ride a bike, my dad was carting me off every Sunday to the World’s Fairgrounds.  And as he hand-led the pony round the ring (he insisted upon this, I still remember), he’d tell me stories of the horses on the salasch, particularly Ferner, his favorite.

Alphild, Aleksandra and I toured the well-maintained stables of this representative salas, and then walked up to the farmhouse.  It’s comfortably settled in the midst of fruit-laden walnut trees, curled around itself like an old barn cat.  Salasi in Vojvodina typically included such a house on their property.  Families would spend summer months out here amidst ripening crops as the towns baked in the long stark sun.  As we stepped through the old kitchen doorway, we smelled the coolness afforded by its thick walls and heavily curtained windows.

Though the interior décor included its share of kitsch (I’m sparing you from the photos of the old radio and typewriter collections), check out the great tile stove.  It stands as proof that these “outposts” really were homesteads, and for much more than one season.  To my eye, this type of stove resembles some of the handsomely crafted examples I saw this June in the Museum of Alsace, Strasbourg.  The deep baking oven was new to me, though the lovely primitive decoration felt familiar and homey.

The decorative touch that really captured my interest was the hand-painted “wallpaper,” an effect achieved by rolling a carved wooden cylinder up the walls in rows.  I’m not sure you can see it that clearly from the pictures, but the red pattern around the stove, and the blue chickens framing Aleksandra and me are the product of much labor and precision on the part of the salas housewife (or a professional, if it was a wealthy family).  My friend Jovan Knezevic explained the skill to me as we admired the sunflower design decorating his kitchen in Feketic.  “It was a great skill to know just where to end, and where to begin the next row,” he explained, pointing out the patterns that lined up both horizontally and vertically.  And it’s so much better than wallpaper on these uneven walls—so much prettier and more eye-catching than a single color.

Really, though, the finest art exhibited in these salasi wasn’t on the walls, but on the plates of the lucky folk around its dining table.  The menu of Salas 137 was ten pages long—and available in English to boot.  The translations artfully described the “relationships” between the meat and vegetables in a dish, with mouth-watering descriptions to tickle the palate and unfamiliar phrases to twist the tongue.

Though I never had the taste for it when I was a kid, “Rindfleisch” now made my heart pound for the first time.  “Meat cooked in a soup with tomato or dill sauce—just like a Sunday at your granny’s (580 dinar).”  Oma, what would you say about the low price on this meal that took you so long to make?  But it wasn’t simply the dishes with German names that induced a dizzying wave of nostalgia.  On the opposite page, “Sarmice” was described as “ground meat nicely wrapped into cabbage leaves, stacked into a ceramic pot and baked in a village stove (560 dinar).”  This blending of German and Slavic tastes is found on every page of the menu, right down to the desserts—where “creme bitte” kept happy company with “baklava.”  Just look at our lovely appetizer plate, where delectable cheese-filled pita slices were accompanied by schinken (here being devoured by Alfild, a Kansas native who appreciates the time and effort behind these homemade delicacies).

–that’s Aleksandra indulging in the last of the cherry baklava.

Food does so much more than bring friends and family together round a table.  It brings together cultures, creating interest in difference and blending diverse tastes and preferences.  As my Oma continued to make coffee in a Turkish pot in her New York apartment, so do Serbian guests of Salas 137 get a taste of the her famous “schnee nockerl.”  No matter how seperatist cultures claim they stand, their food choices make plain the everyday give-and-take of life in these farming villages.  Out here on the wide plains of Vojvodina, people learn to work together, to live together, and even to sup with one another.  One more quote from the delectable Salas 137 menu will illustrate my point.  “The recipe is secret,” begins the description of the “homemade fine pate from ‘Salas’” appetizer.  “It was given to us as a gift by a heir to once well-known butcher, a Vojvodinian German.”

It pleases the soul well to know that a long-ago act of generosity is still recognized and appreciated, by such a diverse—and hungry– audience.

After the meal, we took a long late-afternoon stroll around the grounds.  Old salas maps indicate that these properties were commonly thin and long, and Salas 137 seemed to stretch back endlessly as we left the farm’s outbuildings behind us.

We delighted in finding orchards laden with fruit.  That little pear tree filled our bags with future snack food (geez, should I have admitted that?), and the quince trees perfumed the air with their delicate scent.  Wildflowers and what looked like tobacco plants grew in between the lines of the plantings.  The quiet scene evoked images of a healthy “Schlaraffenland.”  Didn’t anybody come back here and harvest these fertile trees?  Perhaps they were really just for show, or what remained from an earlier working orchard.

The goat took a fancy to Alphild, particularly afterAleksandra identified and plucked wild basil just for him.  And I found poetry and strange comfort in the fields of freshly harvested kukuruz, or ‘kookoorootz’ as my father used to say, smiling at Tanya and me.

“Bring the horses round to the salasch.”  Those were among the last words of my grandfather in 1989.  After a tumultuous life of great loss and even greater new beginnings, Opa was dreaming of his idea of heaven.  And it is no wonder to me anymore, why his idea of peace and perfection was a Vojvodina farm.  As the sun set on our day at Salas 137 and the Yugo pulled away from the homestead’s twinkling lights, I felt the pull of long-lost roots.

prolific scholar, skilled Yugo driver, Serbian gourmand, and my dear friend.

You are meeting her as I did, when I first arrived from Belgrade weighed down by book-filled boxes and overstuffed suitcases.  With her cheery pink t-shirt and instant smile, Aleksandra presented me with a warm and gracious welcome to Novi Sad.  Somehow, through the muddle of newness and jetlag, I was gently guided into my new home, my office at the university, and a fabulous outdoor café in the heart of the city (Mediteraneo, on Isa Bajica).  And I listened with wonder and interest as my new colleague discussed her challenging teaching experiences and a startling number of recent publications.

I am pleased to say that my rather small library of Necessary Reading Material now includes Aleksandra’s Maksin Hong Kingston I Ejmi Ten: Ratnica I Samanka.  And I’d happily dig into the over-400 pages of analysis on Kingston and Amy Tam, if only my Serbian were, o, 10,000 times better.  Tiny Walt seems to have gotten much further. (more on Tiny Walt later.  As several of you predicted, he has really taken to Balkan folk dancing– and thanks to Aleksandra actually knows more about two of his most illustrious fans.  Whitman Ah Singh, indeed!).

As intellectual, industrious, and professional as she is, Aleksandra is also adventurous, funny, and—well, cute.  She shares these excellent qualities with her beloved 19-year old Yugo.  It may rattle your teeth, smell like petrol and allow any passerby access to whatever’s on the front seat, but the Yugo has character.  Like its owner, it’s got pluck, volition, get-up-and-go.  That is, when it’s not in the shop.

After 19 years, Aleksandra and the Yugo have become One Thing On The Road.  Here they are , nosing their way out of a Serbian traffic jam.  And yes, that’s how close the passenger seat is to the driver, in the Yugo.

Novi Sad’s markets—Ribja, Limanska, Futoska (seen here)—are an intense and heady experience. Everyone seems to know what they’re doing, and everybody talks fast. Thanks to Aleksandra’s instructions, I can wheel and deal even with my meager Serbian.  She’s also introduced me to her favorite stallkeepers, including the toothless guy who sold me the juiciest, reddest tomatoes I’ve ever eaten.  Freshly picked walnuts, plums, corn, Muscat grapes, wildflower honey (“med”), paprika, homemade wines and sausage (“kohlbasc”, similar to the Hungarian specialties my father made and sold): these markets present the proof that Vojvodina is the ‘breadbasket of Europe.’  (Another blog entirely might have been titled ‘From Fairway to Futoska.’  I’ve come a long from my favorite Harlem market– and it’s been a tasty treat.)

After stocking my fridge full of delectables for those rainy days and workweek evenings, Aleksandra herded me back out to check out Novi Sad’s busy social life.  The city is known for its restaurants, though many of the most delicious and desirable places are accessible only by… Yugo.  The Danube is the site of several lovely hideaway hangouts, including Aleksandra’s favorite: the “Brod Restaurant”, a “ski-bar” (yes, water skis) that sits literally on the river.  Note the pontoons, which help the restaurant and its gangway float with the dramatic tidal shifts.

Ah… the Serbian good life!  Smoked carp, potato salad, fresh corn bread, Gorki List with a slice of lemon… and the late summer sun shining off the water.

That’s us, with our front-row seat of the blue Danube.

Aleksandra has shown me how the Serbians have not forgotten to relax and unwind, particularly on Sundays.  Novi Sad’s bustling shops are closed that day, while the churches do a thriving morning business.  In the afternoon, families spend time together at home or in its open spaces.  Fathers and mothers wheel around baby carriages in Dunavska Park; sisters and brothers play in the white Danubian sand.

Many families own vacation houses along the river that they use only in the summer or on weekends.  Aleksandra’s face lights up whenever she recalls her young years spent on the Monte Negrian coast, in her family’s holiday villa.  Recent political tensions have forced many Serbians to sell their property in Monte Negro; because she cannot physically return to that spectacular seascape, her memories have become even more precious and poignant.

My dedication ends with a candid shot of Doctor Dr. Izgarjan, relaxing in her beautiful “bird’s nest” in downtown Novi Sad.  She told me that her lovely greenhouse balcony was sealed off and full of garbage when she moved into the apartment.  The enterprising Aleksandra broke through the walls, installed new windows and skylights, and brightened the high-ceilinged space with artwork and bright color.  It feels like a country retreat, a place where one can clear one’s mind, think deep thoughts… and write elegant tracts on faraway subjects.

Here’s to a great friendship across borders: between a scholar of contemporary ethnic American writers and a ‘Whitmaniac’, between the daughter of intellectuals from Zrenjanin and a butcher’s daughter from Brooklyn, between a Serbian with a passionate interest in American culture, and an American who is passionate about connecting with her Vojvodina heritage.

Хвала, Алексанцра!  Ти си непроценјив!

…it’s a helluva town!

Stari Grad’s up and the Limans are down,

The fortress on the hill has tunnels underground.

New York!  New Nork!  Both such hellsuva towns!

Liner notes:

“Nork”: a shopping center ‘for the people’ (and actually, there’s a huge “IDEA” supermarket—a relatively new concept here in Serbia—on the basement level of New Nork).

“Stari Grad”: old town.  Despite its name, Novi Sad has a quaint downtown lined with multicolored two-story structures that have a distinctly Viennese flavor.  This, for example, is Dunavska Street, which extends to the Danube River (or Dunav) behind the camera, and connects up ahead with Zmaj Jovina, Novi Sad’s café-lined pedestrian zone.

Most of these buildings were constructed while the city was under Austro-Hungarian rule in the eigthteenth and nineteenth centuries.  Established in 1694, obtaining its present name and status as a free royal city in 1748, Novi Sad soon became the cultural and economic center of the region. The first grammar school opened in 1791 (a good 30 years before Brooklyn’s P.S.1!),  the Serbian National Theatre was founded here in 1861; Matica Srpska (a time-honored cultural institution and the center for the study of Serbian language, literature, and philosophy) moved here in 1864.  Even after being attacked by everyone from the Turks to the Russians to Hungarian Fascists, even after NATO bombardment left Novi Sad without bridges, communication, and a water supply for months in 1999, the center city is charming, elegant, and welcoming.

If you could step into that photo and walk into the heart of town, you’d find a quirky antique shop (just on your right, with the gated windows), gelato stands, boutiques like the Manual Company (selling fine leather goods like exquisitely tooled book covers), arched entrances to alleyways with more shops (lingerie and shoe stores with tightly organized display windows), and Novi Sad’s oldest building— Beli lav, or the White Lion, dating from 1720.  Dunavska Street melts into Zmaj Jovina here, where the Bishop’s Palace (circa 1901) suns itself while looking down its nose at the popcorn vendors, dripping gelato cones, and too-tight jeans.

Wander outside the well-tended walks of stari grad and you’ll pass buildings of similar architectural interest; they just haven’t been as well tended.  So, if you continue down Zmaj Jovina (the old “Hauptgasse” of the nineteenth century) and pass through the magisterial Trg Slobode (Liberty Square), keeping magisterial City Hall (an exact replica of the city hall in Graz) on your left, you’ll soon cross Uspenska and wind up on one of my favorite streets, Futoska Jevrejska (those “j”s sound like “y”s, okay?).  On this part of this long street, you’ll see New Nork and a gorgeous synagogue on your left—more on that later!  It’s used for concerts and gatherings now, since the congregation couldn’t afford to keep up the property.  A hint of what it might now look like without the city’s support can be seen directly across the street.  I love the juxtaposition of the praying angel and the weirdly (typically!) named sporting goods store.

“The Limans”: four connected neighborhood districts about 15 minutes’ walk south of Stari Grad.  This is where you’ll find the University of Novi Sad, nicely situated on a curve of the Danube.  It’s also where you’ll find me a great deal of the time, either in my office at the U., in my apartment taking in the interesting view, or enjoying the walk in between.

So how does one live here?  And what’s life like at the University of Novi Sad?  This photo, taken from my apartment on the first day of class (taken from my balcony) addresses both of these questions…

City buses packed with students, campus buildings gazing indifferently over the lives of everyday folk, the obligatory, ubiquitous ads catering to Generation O (or whatever they call it here): this is life in a college town, in New Europe as well as the good ole’ US.  What you don’t see here are the many cafes (with names like “Buddha Bar” and “Mammis”—yo, who out there remembers “Grandma’s” up at Columbia?) tucked underneath the buildings facing campus and the shopping mall (“Spens”) complete with swimming pool, ice skating rink, and boxing club.   There are also countless “fotokopie” joints as well as a great coffeehouse-bookstore, Nublu— you East Village denizens may know owner Ilhan Ersahin’s club by the same name on Ave C.

All the same, I’m constantly reminded that it’s just not the same…

Welcome to the Faculty of Philosophy, University of Novi Sad.  In this young-ish university, this faculty is one of the two oldest, founded in 1954.  The pleasingly ‘70s-style building not only survived the 1999 NATO bombings; it had a front-row seat when NATO rockets destroyed two bridges that linked Novi Sad with Belgrade and the south.  Nowadays, its view of the Danube is interrupted by the skeleton of a building that awaits funding for completion (and has become a rather spectacular showcase for political graffiti).  Here’s the view: Faculty of Philosophy on the right and the Danube on the left, behind  the concrete monolith.

“The fortress on the hill has tunnels underground”: I’m ending where Novi Sad’s history begins.  Petrovaradin Fortress looks over Novi Sad from a strategic vantage point on the right side of the Danube.  The hill is a perfect place for a lookout or safe haven, particularly if you consider the super-flatness of the Pannonian plains around it.  The remains of Paleolithic settlements have been found on the site of the Upper Fortress, and ramparts from the Bronze Age (about 3000 BCE) suggest that Petrovaradin has a long history as a fortified settlement.  Everyone from Celts to Romans to Hungarians to Turks to Austrians to (most recently) Exit Festival participants have attempted to siege the fortress.  It stands as a testament to Novi Sad’s diversity and fortitude through the most trying of times.  And the ten miles of tunnels underneath it… who knows what they might hide, protect, reveal?  This city, this culture has extraordinary depth that I aim to explore over the next three months… for now, it’s g’night, Novi Sad.

After meeting Cultural Affairs Officer Susan Delja at the American Embassy, the three of us walked down Kneza Milosa to the Monument Café, a sleek restaurant with a shaded terrace humming with conversation and a scene-setting soundtrack (you’ll here piped-in music almost everywhere you walk in Serbian cities, from walking streets to public parks).  We were joined by Jeff Lash, the only other Fulbrighter to be sent to Serbia this year.   Susan recommended the cheesecake, and all of us—except you, Dida!—indulged as we were briefed on the Embassy’s cultural activities.  Though the American presence returned less than ten years ago after Milosevic fell, and Susan’s only been in her position for two years, she and her staff have been busy inviting American speakers and initiating new programs designed to build understanding and cooperation between the two countries.  “It’s a great time to be here,” Susan said, and I knew she meant it as she described the interesting challenges of raising daughters in central Belgrade.

–I know what you’re thinking.  Yes, this is a perfect place for a photo of Susan, Dida, Jeff and I.  But at this point I was still shaken from what happened when I tried to photograph the American Embassy earlier that afternoon.  The grand building at 50 Kneza Milosa was firebombed last year during the Kosovo crisis, and though the Embassy is still in full operation, they have kept the front windows boarded up and painted as white as the building itself.  It’s s ominously faceless— and a great photo opp.  You’ll have to believe me when I tell you that an Embassy guard asked me to show him the photos I had taken, and then watched as I erased them.  And to accept the fact that you’ll never know what the Embassy looks like (unless you google it, of course.  I see from what’s out there that I should have just crossed the street).

So, let me focus on a subject that’s much less camera-shy: the esteemed and energetic political geographer Jeff Lash.

Jeff’s in front of the Hotel Moscow, an art nouveau landmark in the center of the city.  The street vibe here is electric and slick, thanks to the designer-clad crowds, the chaos of power lines, neon signs, and the very cool Soviet-era building facades.

We’re headed to “Landscape of Life”, a print exhibition curated Fulbright Senior Scholar Sandria Hu.  But we’ve got a lot to catch up on since we last chatted at the Fulbright debriefing in July, so we take our time getting there.  Jeff, his wife Gretchen and sons Perrin and Addis have settled into an apartment in the neighborhood of Dorcal, near Danube-rimmed Kalmegdan Park.  He’s sharp, well-traveled, and enthusiastic about teaching political geography on this volatile ground.  Though we’re trained in different fields, we share a strong interest in how physical space shapes political and social movements.  I’m ranting about Carl Sanderson’s “Mannahatta”, which vividly shows how New York’s topography shaped its history; Jeff redirects my attention to our current environs, pointing out some unusual features of Kneza Mihaila, Belgrade’s colorful pedestrian zone.

My last visit to Belgrade was in 2006, and I was surprise how much more ‘western’ the city and its people looked this time around.  Aldo, Nike, Adidas, Zara: has it really been less than 10 years since Milosevic’s Yugoslavia?

There were reminders, however, that these gentrified streets were the site of terrible violence in the not-too-distant past.  Just a few blocks away from the scene above, pedestrians stroll by the carcasses of buildings bombed by NATO in 1999.  These derelict piles are a raw reminder of our involvement in the fall of Yugoslavia.  I can’t imagine looking at them—or not looking at them– every day.  As a New Yorker, I must consider how I might have coped with walking by the standing remains of the World Trade Center for a few years.  How quickly we shielded ourselves from that sight, even dressing the remains of the Deutsche Bank building with somber black netting.  Buildings can’t even be imploded anymore on Manhattan island; if they’re slated for demolition, they are disassembled floor by floor.

What does it do to a city, a people, to be forced to live with such monumental reminders of tragedy and pain?

Other signs of ugly trouble are literally plastered around Belgrade.  These posters went up days before the “Pride Parade” of September 20^th and helped inspire the concern that led to the cancellation of Serbia’s second-ever gay pride event.  The caption says something like “we’re going to get you!” and its graphic depicts a flag-waving mob.

Yes, that’s Englebert Humperdinck’s smile breaking through this wall of hate.   What a great place to plaster and layer those ads for feel-good concerts, revolutionary exhibitions, progressive marches– even well-intentioned ad campaigns… yo Levi’s!  I see you’ve got something going here, with “Original Levi’s Stores” popping up in Balkan shopping malls, and little red tags displayed on some of Belgrade’s most influential ‘quarters.  How about bringing on that Whitmanic ad campaign where you might really help things “go forth”?  (yes, that’s Whitman’s voice reading his poem “America” around 1890, though Levi’s doesn’t mention his name in the credits.)

There have been other mentors, muses, facilitators, and friends whose brief roles in this saga occurred at just the right time, providing a memorable encounter or a key idea.  Here are nine of them—none of whom I knew a month ago, though they’ve added immeasurable (and literal!) meaning to my Serbian odyssey. 

Allow me to introduce Professor Radmila Gorup and her students (minus one) of “Elementary Serbian/Croatian.Bosnian” at Columbia U., Fall ’09.  Radmila generously welcomed me to join the class for the first three weeks before my departure on the Fulbright and the students were just as generous in their tolerance of my (incredibly slow!)  absorption of Serbian grammar, and the Serbian Cyrillic alphabet.  It’s been some years since I sat on the other side of the desk at CU; but I settled in to that seminar chair easily, thanks to an excellent teacher and intelligent, sympathetic colleagues.  Several of them spoke Serbian, Croatian, or Macedonian at home; some of them had a remarkable native’s understanding of the culture; all of them were intelligent and invested in the study of these languages and cultures.  As a native speaker of German myself, I adored the moments when Radmila was given pause over a student’s articulated response.  “Just where are you from?” she quizzed Millina, after a peculiar use of the Croatian vocabulary came up.  We all eagerly tuned in to these conversations.  This was a living, breathing, changing set of languages!  It made the difficult grammar exercises mean something.  Hvala, Radmila, for this delicious and intriguing introduction!  (and if you’re wondering—yes, my Serbian’s pretty lousy.  But I plan on persevering in Novi Sad, with Aleksandra’s help.  Stay tuned for future posts in Cyrillic!).

Three weeks of introduction to Serbian language and culture culminated in a fitting and rather spectacular finale this Tuesday, when Serbian President Boris Tadic addressed the Columbia community as part of its World Leaders Forum.   How could I not vie for one of the front-row seats?

                ( I’m grateful to Alaa Milbes for the photo– many thanks again. ~k.)

“I hear he talks from the chair,” whispered a student who had also managed to secure a good vantage point.  Though he had solidly grounded his large frame in a blue leather chair for his introduction,  Tadic rose to speak—and to meet the challenges offered by an informed and  reactive audience.  His opening remarks outlined the ways in which he has helped build Serbia’s new democracy, as well as his hopes for his country’s EU status and a renewed healthy relationship with the US.  Tadic described with passion his role in the 2000 Bulldozer Revolution, and his stage presence that day made it easy to understand how he had emerged as leader of the Democratic Party.  I found him articulate and convincing, and he seemed to hold the audience’s good will. 

And then came the difficult questions—most of them from Columbia grad students hailing from former Yugoslavian territories.  Did Tadic recognize a contradiction between his democratic ideals and his position on Kosovo, or the recently passed legislation allowing the government to shut down news agencies easily?  How did he feel about the “Pride Parade” (“Gay” implied but not explicitly mentioned)– the second in the country’s history—that was cancelled this Sunday because of threats of violence?  Tadic conceded that practical considerations sometimes needed to be addressed before principles, though ultimately and always the goal was democracy.  He had, after all, offered his support and protection of Parade participants—“and yet,” the questioner almost interrupted,”there was violence in the streets nonetheless.”  When I got home, I googled and easily found reports of Sunday’s ill-fated celebration in the New York Times and on the BBC.  There was some shocking video of the Belgrade streets—blood, beatings, badges and all. 

Walt (I turn to my traveling partner helping himself to his fourth bag of airline peanuts), we now must justify you to an audience that is complex, critical, and ready to act.  What will this new democracy think of your Passionate Democracy, a concept of nationhood empowered by “the institution of the dear love of comrades”? 

 And then this from the depths of Seat 23C, with full heart (and mouth):

 I will plant companionship thick as trees along all the rivers of America, and along the shores of the great lakes, and all over the prairies,

I will make inseparable cities, with their arms about each other’s necks.

For you these, from me, O Democracy, to serve you, ma femme!

For you!  for you, I am trilling these songs.