Literature and Film from East Europe’s Forgotten “Second World”

Description

Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia-no longer on the map. East Europe of the socialist period may seem like a historical oddity, apparently so different from everything before and after. Yet the masterpieces of literature and cinema from this largely forgotten “Second World,” as well as by the authors formed in it and working in its aftermath, surprise and delight with their contemporary resonance.
This book introduces and illuminates a number of these works. It explores how their aesthetic ingenuity discovers ways of engaging existential and universal predicaments, such as how one may survive in the world of victimizations, or imagine a good city, or broach the human boundaries to live as a plant.
Like true classics of world art, these novels, stories, and films-to rephrase Bohumil Hrabal-keep “telling us things about ourselves we don’t know.” In lively and jargon-free prose, Gordana P. Crnkovic builds on her rich teaching experience to create paths to these works and reveal how they changed lives.

Gordana P. Crnkovic is Professor of Slavic and of Comparative Literature, Cinema and Media at the University of Washington, Seattle, USA. Her writings include Imagined Dialogues: Eastern European Literature in Conversation with American and English Literature (2000), Post-Yugoslav Literature and Film: Fires, Foundations, Flourishes (2012), over 30 articles, as well as texts of the experimental video Zagreb Everywhere.

Introduction: On Invitations and Discoveries
Part I: Invitations 1. The Flight of Form: This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen (Tadeusz Borowski, Poland, 1948)
2. The Gift of a Story-Teller: The Bridge on the Drina (Ivo Andric, Yugoslavia, 1961)
3. Over There, the War Does Not End: The General of the Dead Army (Ismail Kadare, Albania, 1963)
4. On Kindness: Two Films from 1960s Czechoslovakia (directors Miloš Forman, Ján Kádar & Elmar Klos)
5. That Was There Too: Man Is Not a Bird (Dušan Makavejev, director, Yugoslavia, 1965)
6. The Fireworks of Different Desires: Daisies (Vera Chytilová, director, Czechoslovakia, 1966)
7. The Most Important Thing: Lovefilm (István Szabó, director, Hungary, 1970)
8. Fiction Against Fiction: A Tomb for Boris Davidovich (Danilo Kiš, Yugoslavia, 1976)
9. On Mice and Books: Too Loud a Solitude (Bohumil Hrabal, Czechoslovakia, 1976)
10. Taking Things Too Literally: Man of Marble (Andrzej Wajda, director, Poland, 1976)
11. A Terrifying Simplicity of History: The Czar’s Madman (Jaan Kross, Estonia, 1978)
12. Human Judging and Animal Love: The Unbearable Lightness of Being (Milan Kundera, Czechoslovakia & France, 1984)
13. A Non-Readers’ Lesson to Writers: The Door (Magda Szabó, Hungary, 1987)
14. Intelligence, Artificial: Decalogue: One (Krzysztof Kieslowski, director, Poland, 1988)
15. Nela’s Courage: The Oak (Lucian Pintilie, director, Romania, 1992)
Part II: Probing Deeper1. The Victim’s Double Vision and the Long Road to The Pianist (Roman Polanski, director, Poland etc., 2002)
2. Imagining a Good City: One Who Sings Thinks No Evil (a.k.a. One Song a Day Takes Mischief Away, Krešo Golik, director, Yugoslavia, 1970)
3. The Reign of Images and the Good Icons: Mothers (Milcho Manchevski, Macedonia, 2010)
4. Easing Into the Non-Human Future: Border State (Tõnu Õnnepalu, Estonia, 1993)
5. On Reading Literature: Turning the Tables, the Writers on Critics
Bibliography Index

“Gordana Crnkovic writes with such gentle delight, such a captivating capacity to explore and explain, such a vigorous understanding of the way film unfolds in front of the viewer and inside their head that you want to grab the camera and start filming then and there.” —Milcho Manchevski, Academy Award-nominated writer, director, and photographer“Literature and Film from East Europe’s Forgotten “Second World” delivers much more than its title promises. In addition to providing luminous and mostly jargon-free readings of major prose and cinematic texts, Crnkovic’s book tells us how and why to tackle big and sometimes difficult works of art, demonstrating that, even in our sound-bite-addicted age, engaging with such works can change our lives.” —Andrew Wachtel, Fellow, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, USA“Gordana Crnkovic has written an absolutely delightful and inspiring book on an oddly neglected topic: the literature and film of the so-called ‘Second World’-Eastern Europe, during its post-World War II years behind the Iron Curtain. The astonishing truth about the fiction and film of this period-whether that of Crnkovic’s native Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Hungary, or Romania-is that far from being a dark and despairing response to the various forms of repression then current, this is a literature of pleasure, warmth, energy, humor, and the overcoming of obstacles, political and otherwise. Crnkovic has chosen key novels and films to show us what we have been missing, and by the time she has finished, we have a whole new reading list and filmography to look forward to. Crnkovic’s enthusiasm and keen analytic powers endow the fiction and film in question with the special aura of a mini-Renaissance-one unmatched in the ‘First World’ of the Cold War.” —Marjorie Perloff, Sadie Dernham Patek Professor of Humanities, Emerita, Stanford University, USA, and author of THE EDGE OF IRONY: Modernism in the Shadow of the Habsburg Empire.“Gordana Crnkovic’s passion for literature and film shines through all these essays. In each of the 15 shorter ones she has penned a charming love letter to the film or book in question, and in each of the five longer ones she provides the deeper sort of scholarly (but still highly readable) analysis for which she is well known. Overall, she has done a great service to these outstanding artists of what used to be ‘Eastern Europe’ in bringing them to our attention.” —Ronelle Alexander, Professor Emerita, University of California, Berkeley, USA“[Gordana P. Crnkovic] offers an enlightening path, filled with new possibilities, experiences, and discoveries. … These “essays of invitation” open the portal to an invigorating world of lesser-known, or lesser-appreciated” —EuropeNow Journal

Additional information