Papers by Krinka Vidakovic-Petrov
European Journal of Jewish Studies, Mar 27, 2023
The article is dedicated to Hinko Gottlieb (1886–1948), who is introduced here as the first Yugos... more The article is dedicated to Hinko Gottlieb (1886–1948), who is introduced here as the first Yugoslav Jewish writer who dealt with the theme of the Holocaust in real time. The personal biography of this forgotten author presents his life in the historical context of the pre-Holocaust and Holocaust periods. The inception of Holocaust literature in Yugoslavia is manifested in Gottlieb’s works, imbued with irony and satire, written prior to the occupation of Yugoslavia in 1941. Special attention is paid to his works written during the Holocaust in Yugoslavia (1941–1945), highlighting key issues regarding the presentation of the Holocaust in literature as art, the function of intertextuality and the use of literary genres, such as the science fiction novel, not traditionally associated with Holocaust literature. Attention is also given to the reception of Gottlieb’s works in the post-Holocaust period.
Cuadernos Hispanoamericanos, 1989
Studia Aurea: Revista de Literatura Española y Teoría Literaria del Renacimiento y Siglo de Oro, Dec 7, 2020
Among classic literary masterpieces, Don Quijote ranks among those that have attracted the highes... more Among classic literary masterpieces, Don Quijote ranks among those that have attracted the highest numbers of readers, translators and scholars. Today, we expect new interpretations of this classic novel as well as explorations of its place, influence and resonance in the national or global republic of letters. However, María Sánchez-Pérez has presented us with a book that instead of all the latter offers a factual discovery. It is a hitherto unknown translation of some parts of Don Quijote into Judeo-Spanish, the language of the Spanish Jews expelled from their homeland prior to the Golden Age of Spanish literature. The author's discovery complements the list of around 150 languages Don Quijote has been translated into. Although the Judeo-Spanish versions were published in modern times (1881 and 1931) they evaded the attention of researchers because they were practically buried in the pages of two local Sephardic journals published in Istanbul. These not easily accessible journals, relegated to oblivion after events that changed the historical and political map of the region, were actualized thanks to the fairly recent interest in Sephardic periodicals and the diligent research of María Sánchez-Pérez. We are not aware of any complete translation of Don Quijote to Judeo-Spanish, but thanks to this book we now know that two segments of the novel were translated/adapted by David Fresco (1853-1933) and that they appeared in Sephardic journals published in Istanbul: El Amigo de la Famiya (1881) and La Boz de Oriente (1931). The selected texts are two fairly long segments from the first part of Don Quijote: "El curioso impertinente" and "Historia de Cardenio". El Quijote en judeoespañol opens with a foreword written by Paloma Díaz Mas emphasizing the importance of the discovery of these texts. The main body
Israel Journal of Foreign Affairs, 2008
Krinka VUJalwvic Petrov iJ a profeJ.:~or of comparative literature and .:1enior fellow at the In.... more Krinka VUJalwvic Petrov iJ a profeJ.:~or of comparative literature and .:1enior fellow at the In.:~titute of Literature and Art in Belgrade. She Jerved a.:1 ambaJJador of Y ugo.:~lavia to l.:~rael (2002-2006). Prof Vwalcovic Petrov iJ the author of numeroUJ puhlication.:~ on literary, hiJtorical and political topic.:! a.:1 weU aJ .:1everal hoolc.:!, including: Culture of the Spanish Jews in Yugoslavia. Serbia and Spain: Literary Connections, and Serbs in America and their Periodicals.
Beoiberistika, 2021
El escritor yugoslavo Ivo Andrić pasó más de dos años en Madrid (1928-1930) en el cargo de vicecó... more El escritor yugoslavo Ivo Andrić pasó más de dos años en Madrid (1928-1930) en el cargo de vicecónsul de la Legación diplomática de Yugoslavia en España. Su experiencia de España se manifiesta en algunas de sus obras. Temas y motivos españoles que aparecen en ellas muestran tres aspectos. Uno de ellos trata del pintor español Francisco Goya. Andrić tuvo la oportunidad de conocer bien las obras de Goya gracias a una exposición extraordinaria organizada en el Museo del Prado a propósito del centenario de su muerte (1928). Goya aparece en dos obras de Andrić: «Goya» (ensayo biográfico, 1929) y «Conversación con Goya» (relato, 1935). El estudio de estas dos obras abarca la consideración de varias cuestiones: diferencias de género entre ensayo y relato (lo documental opuesto a lo ficcional), la interpretación de obras de Goya (especialmente «Los caprichos», «Los desastres de la guerra» y los dibujos) y su poética, la divergencia y convergencia entre ensayos sobre Goya escritos por autores yugoslavos contemporáneos (Miroslav Krleža y Oto Bihalji Merin). El análisis se centra especialmente en «Conversación con Goya», un relato excepcional sobre la creación de Goya como personaje literario, su transformación de figura histórica en artista paradigmático (el paso de la biografía a la filosofía del arte), la construcción (verbal) del retrato, el uso de la epifanía como metáfora y recurso narrativo, el uso del monólogo interior, la construcción de las dos dimensiones narrativas (la mimética opuesta a la ficcional), la analogía con El retrato de un artista adolescente de James Joyce, la interacción entre «realidad» y ficción, y, finalmente, la discreta perspectiva autoirónica que Andrić entreteje en esta narrativa extraordinaria. Palabras clave: Ivo Andrić, Francisco Goya, ensayo biográfico, relato, epifanía como metáfora y recurso narrativo.
Colloquia Humanistica, 2020
European Journal of Jewish Studies
The article is dedicated to Hinko Gottlieb (1886–1948), who is introduced here as the first Yugos... more The article is dedicated to Hinko Gottlieb (1886–1948), who is introduced here as the first Yugoslav Jewish writer who dealt with the theme of the Holocaust in real time. The personal biography of this forgotten author presents his life in the historical context of the pre-Holocaust and Holocaust periods. The inception of Holocaust literature in Yugoslavia is manifested in Gottlieb’s works, imbued with irony and satire, written prior to the occupation of Yugoslavia in 1941. Special attention is paid to his works written during the Holocaust in Yugoslavia (1941–1945), highlighting key issues regarding the presentation of the Holocaust in literature as art, the function of intertextuality and the use of literary genres, such as the science fiction novel, not traditionally associated with Holocaust literature. Attention is also given to the reception of Gottlieb’s works in the post-Holocaust period.
Serbian Studies: Journal of the North American Society for Serbian Studies, 2013
Vasa D. Mihailovich was born in the southern Serbian town of Prokuplje in 1926. After leaving his... more Vasa D. Mihailovich was born in the southern Serbian town of Prokuplje in 1926. After leaving his homeland of Serbia (Yugoslavia) to settle in the United States in 1951, Vasa D. Mihailovich dedicated himself to building an intangible bridge connecting the two parts of his life: two cultures, languages, and literatures. He has done so in many ways: by teaching Serbian language and literature, translating literary works from Serbian into English, researching and writing on Serbian writers and literature, editing anthologies, compiling bibliographies, writing reviews, and organizing professional associations and public fora for the presentation and dissemination of information on issues pertaining not only to Serbian, but Yugoslav and Slavic culture as well. These were the building blocks in the bridge that made possible and enhanced communication between one end and the other, highlighting the Serbian, Yugoslav, and South Slavic contribution to the world republic<<what does this mean?>> of letters and culture. Vasa D. Mihailovich defended his Ph.D. thesis "Hermann Hesse and Russian Literature" at the University of California at Berkeley and became a professor in the Department for Slavic Languages and Literatures at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he held courses on Russian language and literature as well as Serbian language and literature (1961-95). In addition to teaching and academic duties, he engaged in a number of other activities following his multifaceted interest in literature. Mihailovich's short stories and poems present him as a modern writer, a key representative of contemporary Serbian literature in the diaspora. He was also an avid and insightful reader of past and present Serbian literature and over many years published numerous reviews, studies, anthologies, translations, and bibliographies. Among his translations were the works of the most important modern Serbian/Yugoslav writers, as well as the best of Serbian literature from earlier historical periods. Especially outstanding were Mihailovich's translations of the Mountain Wreath by P. Petrović Njegoš and Blue Legends by J. Dučić.
Jevreji, državljani Kraljevine Srbije, uzeli su puno učešće u ratovima za oslobođenje i ujedinjen... more Jevreji, državljani Kraljevine Srbije, uzeli su puno učešće u ratovima za oslobođenje i ujedinjenje. Više od 600 srpskih Jevreja je mobilisano u vojne jedinice, a oko 160 je u ratu dalo svoje živote. Mnogi među njima su učestvovali u ratu kao oficiri i obavljali važne dužnosti, posebno u sanitetskoj službi. I Jevreji, podanici Austrougarske monarhije, odazvali su se vojnoj dužnosti i uzeli učešće u ovom ratu za koji nisu imali nikakvog interesa i koji im je doneo samo stradanje i žrtve.Jews, citizens of the Kingdom of Serbia, took full part in the wars for liberation and unification. More than 600 Serbian Jews were mobilized into military units, and about 160 gave their lives in the war. Many of them took part in the war as officers and performed important duties, especially in the medical service. The Jews, subjects of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy, also responded to military duty and took part in this war, for which they had no interest and which brought them only suffering and sa...
Transgenerational Memory: From Pre-Holocaust to Post-Yugoslavia The study focuses on Fanika as an... more Transgenerational Memory: From Pre-Holocaust to Post-Yugoslavia The study focuses on Fanika as an example of documentary writing by firstand second-generation survivors, i.e. women in the mother-daughter relationship (Hanna Altarac/Fanika Lucic and Branka Jovicic), both from Sarajevo, Yugoslavia. The timeline of the life story of Hanna/Fanika, born in 1922 in a Sephardic family from Sarajevo, coincides on the macro level with the history of Yugoslavia (the establishment of the state and the interwar period, World War Two and the Holocaust, the postwar socialist period, the break-up of the country and post-Yugoslavia), which is important for the contextualization of the narrative. We have analyzed the motivation of first-generation survivor Fanika Lucic to present her memories of the Holocaust, highlighting the importance of communicative memory as an instrument of their transmission to a second-generation survivor as well as the process involved in their transfer from private to pub...
Philologia Serbica, 2022
Space in the Novel Like Gold in Fire by Aleksandar Petrov
The novel is structured as a text with... more Space in the Novel Like Gold in Fire by Aleksandar Petrov
The novel is structured as a text within a text, which enables the author to embed the story of one war into the story of another one evolving in a different time period.
The semantic nucleus of the novel is the chronotope defined as turnover, which seems characteristic of prose works on war (including genocide and the Holocaust).
Another specific feature of this novel is the focus on the movement of characters in space, but not in the manner found in travelogues and adventure novels. The mobility of the characters in this novel suggests turnover and change, emphasizing at the same time the significance and function of certain types of space.
We have highlighted several types of space, and among them especially spaces of roots and displacement, both defined according to the parameter of the subjective and social relationship between character and environment (social, cultural, ideological). One such example is Pittsburgh, one of the historical centers of Serbian immigrants in the USA. This space is associated with narration characteristic for Diasporic literature which tends to articulate a dual perspective – memory of life in the previous space and perception of current life in the new, adopted space. Some spaces, such as the Belgrade quarter Dorćol, appear as places of historical and cultural memory. On the other hand, the death camp Jasenovac is a sort of zero space, one in which (existential) space is anulled, but can generate a new symbolic space of memory.
Like Gold in Fire offers an insight into how space changes its function. Some spaces have a purely adverbial function: they are a scene of action protagonized by the characters. These same spaces can, however, assume a different function that turns them into the subject of action. These spaces become active, while the characters appear as secondary participants or passive victims of the transformation of space.
Space can also influence the format of narration. Such is the case of communication between characters who are spatially separated. They communicate by letters addressed to the other person in the dialogue. The epistolary format of communication in turn demands the use of writing which again produces a “dialogue” different from one conducted in the oral medium.
The distinction between representations of space and representational spaces (H. Lefebre) is used as an instrument in the analysis of the symbolic level of narration. An example of this is the manner in which Petrov uses a a work of art (painting) of a character in the description of this individual’s death in the Jasenovac extermination camp. On the symbolic level, the painting “The Arc de Triomphe in Paris” anticipates the tragic fate of its author, while at the same time it represents his death as the obliteration of painting as a spatial art, giving way to music as a temporal art, once existential space is extinguished.
Space and time are integrated, but their relationship varies. In this novel the movement through time is “anchored” in points of space.
Mujeres sefardíes lectoras y escritoras, siglos XIX-XXI
Beoiberística : Revista de Estudios Ibéricos, Latinoamericanos y Comparativos, 2021
The Yugoslav writer Ivo Andric spent over two years in Madrid (1928–1930), where he served as vic... more The Yugoslav writer Ivo Andric spent over two years in Madrid (1928–1930), where he served as viceconsul of the Yugoslav Diplomatic Legation in Spain. His experience of Spain is expressed in some of his works. Spanish themes and motifs appearing in them feature three aspects, one of them associated with the Spanish painter Francisco Goya. Andric had the opportunity to get well acquainted with the works of Francisco Goya thanks to an extraordinary exhibition of the painter’s works at the Prado Museum on occasion of the centennial of his death (1928). Goya appears in two of Andric’s works: “Goya” (a biographical essay, 1929) and “Conversation with Goya” (a fictional story, 1935). The study of these two works involves consideration of various issues: generic differences between essay and story (documentary versus fictional), interpretation of Goya’s works (especially The Caprices, The Disasters of War, and drawings) and his poetics, divergence and convergence with essays on Goya writte...
Serbian Studies: Journal of the North American Society for Serbian Studies, 2009
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Papers by Krinka Vidakovic-Petrov
The novel is structured as a text within a text, which enables the author to embed the story of one war into the story of another one evolving in a different time period.
The semantic nucleus of the novel is the chronotope defined as turnover, which seems characteristic of prose works on war (including genocide and the Holocaust).
Another specific feature of this novel is the focus on the movement of characters in space, but not in the manner found in travelogues and adventure novels. The mobility of the characters in this novel suggests turnover and change, emphasizing at the same time the significance and function of certain types of space.
We have highlighted several types of space, and among them especially spaces of roots and displacement, both defined according to the parameter of the subjective and social relationship between character and environment (social, cultural, ideological). One such example is Pittsburgh, one of the historical centers of Serbian immigrants in the USA. This space is associated with narration characteristic for Diasporic literature which tends to articulate a dual perspective – memory of life in the previous space and perception of current life in the new, adopted space. Some spaces, such as the Belgrade quarter Dorćol, appear as places of historical and cultural memory. On the other hand, the death camp Jasenovac is a sort of zero space, one in which (existential) space is anulled, but can generate a new symbolic space of memory.
Like Gold in Fire offers an insight into how space changes its function. Some spaces have a purely adverbial function: they are a scene of action protagonized by the characters. These same spaces can, however, assume a different function that turns them into the subject of action. These spaces become active, while the characters appear as secondary participants or passive victims of the transformation of space.
Space can also influence the format of narration. Such is the case of communication between characters who are spatially separated. They communicate by letters addressed to the other person in the dialogue. The epistolary format of communication in turn demands the use of writing which again produces a “dialogue” different from one conducted in the oral medium.
The distinction between representations of space and representational spaces (H. Lefebre) is used as an instrument in the analysis of the symbolic level of narration. An example of this is the manner in which Petrov uses a a work of art (painting) of a character in the description of this individual’s death in the Jasenovac extermination camp. On the symbolic level, the painting “The Arc de Triomphe in Paris” anticipates the tragic fate of its author, while at the same time it represents his death as the obliteration of painting as a spatial art, giving way to music as a temporal art, once existential space is extinguished.
Space and time are integrated, but their relationship varies. In this novel the movement through time is “anchored” in points of space.
The novel is structured as a text within a text, which enables the author to embed the story of one war into the story of another one evolving in a different time period.
The semantic nucleus of the novel is the chronotope defined as turnover, which seems characteristic of prose works on war (including genocide and the Holocaust).
Another specific feature of this novel is the focus on the movement of characters in space, but not in the manner found in travelogues and adventure novels. The mobility of the characters in this novel suggests turnover and change, emphasizing at the same time the significance and function of certain types of space.
We have highlighted several types of space, and among them especially spaces of roots and displacement, both defined according to the parameter of the subjective and social relationship between character and environment (social, cultural, ideological). One such example is Pittsburgh, one of the historical centers of Serbian immigrants in the USA. This space is associated with narration characteristic for Diasporic literature which tends to articulate a dual perspective – memory of life in the previous space and perception of current life in the new, adopted space. Some spaces, such as the Belgrade quarter Dorćol, appear as places of historical and cultural memory. On the other hand, the death camp Jasenovac is a sort of zero space, one in which (existential) space is anulled, but can generate a new symbolic space of memory.
Like Gold in Fire offers an insight into how space changes its function. Some spaces have a purely adverbial function: they are a scene of action protagonized by the characters. These same spaces can, however, assume a different function that turns them into the subject of action. These spaces become active, while the characters appear as secondary participants or passive victims of the transformation of space.
Space can also influence the format of narration. Such is the case of communication between characters who are spatially separated. They communicate by letters addressed to the other person in the dialogue. The epistolary format of communication in turn demands the use of writing which again produces a “dialogue” different from one conducted in the oral medium.
The distinction between representations of space and representational spaces (H. Lefebre) is used as an instrument in the analysis of the symbolic level of narration. An example of this is the manner in which Petrov uses a a work of art (painting) of a character in the description of this individual’s death in the Jasenovac extermination camp. On the symbolic level, the painting “The Arc de Triomphe in Paris” anticipates the tragic fate of its author, while at the same time it represents his death as the obliteration of painting as a spatial art, giving way to music as a temporal art, once existential space is extinguished.
Space and time are integrated, but their relationship varies. In this novel the movement through time is “anchored” in points of space.
We present the 9th issue of Colloquia Humanistica, whose content is entirely coherent and focused on a single theme: cross-cultural encounters which, whether they occurred as clashes or exchanges, affected everyone involved. Our goal was for all the texts – from the main articles to materials, sources, archival research, and even reviews and discussions – to be in line with the issue’s title. Initially, the title’s “encounters” were supposed to apply to Jewish/non-Jewish relations in a specific area, but the present volume, which is a compilation of the perspectives and interests of many different authors, reveals a more multidimensional meaning of the word.
The Kingdom of Serbia, the United States of America, and the Serbian American Diaspora
This anthology commemorates the centennial of “An Appeal to Americans to Pray for Serbians” issued July 26, 1918 by the administration of President Woodrow Wilson. The appeal recognized the four years of struggle, hardship and sacrifice of the Serbian people following the July 28, 1914 declaration of war by Austria-Hungary.
This book is dedicated to the Great War, an event that shook the world one hundred years ago. Within this vast historical frame-work, this book focuses on the relationship between two Allies—the Kingdom of Serbia and the United States of America, including the role of the Serbian American Diaspora. In the longer historical perspective, World War One, World War Two and the Cold War appear as three global events marking the 20th century and changing the world at the threshold of the new Millennium.
The chapters in this book deal with general issues regarding Serbia’s role in the Great War, beginning with the event that would trigger the war and put the small town of Sarajevo on the world map. An exceptional chapter in this book is dedicated to Serbian American war volunteers, who began enlisting and going to war-torn Serbia and Montenegro in 1914.
This book offers a wealth of information as well as a fascinating narrative of the human urge to resist, survive, and be free to live and love. It provides insights into the relations between two countries – the Kingdom of Serbia and the United States of America.