Historijski pogledi (Nov 2022)
Bosnian literature in Vladimir Jurčić’s horizons: Reconstruction of the unpublished book Muslims in croatian literature
Abstract
The study of Bosniak literature in the period of the Independent State of Croatia has been marginalized in previous literary-historical studies, and the reasons for this were ideological and political in nature, and not scientific. This work deals with the status of Bosniak literature in the literary-critical horizons of Vladimir Jurčić, the bellwether of the Ustasha national ideology in Bosnia and Sarajevo, in the period from 1941st to 1945th. As a professor, editor of daily and periodical publications, he wrote about Bosniak literature and its canonical writers in the light of the ideological and political worldviews. He propagated theses about socio-political function of literature that extends „people's spirit”, „racial-biological” and „national” features. Jurčić attributed to literature a mediating role in transmitting the deep identity of the Croatian people, and developing a thesis on the Croatian national identity of Bosnian Muslims (Bosniaks) he treated Bosniak writers as the most representative reflectors of Croatian national consciousness in Bosnia. In addition to individual studies on Bosniak writers, Jurčić stated that they were separate units of the unpublished book Muslims in Croatian Literature. Jurčić's literary critical habitus is a product of socio-political and intellectual circumstances in Croatia - in the narrower sense and in the SHS - in the broader sense, which were used as a starting point for the production of certain ideological, political and cultural values in the NDH. As a follower of the ideological platform of Radić's HSS (peasant movement) and its reflections on discursive practices, especially in the social - humanities sciences (Dvorniković, Radić, Tomašić, Lukas), he interpreted literature in accordance with these practices, reducing its meaning only to ruling ideologues. He valorized Bosniak literature as a component of Croatian literature, applying several criteria: collective, linguistic, territorial and religious, which he sought to include the widest possible range of identity features and thus support the thesis of Croatianness Bosnian Muslims (Bosniaks). In literary criticism, he promoted theses on racial, ethical and eugenic superiority, then on the national spirit, linguistic and stylistic specifics of Bosnian Muslims (Bosniaks) as an „organic“ part of the Croatian people. He emphasized the „poljodjelski“ character of Bosniak writers between the two world wars, while in older literature, especially in the oral literary tradition- and all that for need of ideological manipulation in the time of the Independent State of Croatia - war, he emphasized the highland (tribal) character that manifested itself in the epic-agonal consciousness. All these theses arose from the idea of unity and continuity of the „organic nation“, but did not find a stronghold in Bosnia because it was cultural and historical terms different from the native Croatian space, which was in principle a fundamental obstacle to its realization. Aware of the insurmountability of the cultural, literary and historical uniqueness of Bosnia, Jurčić constructed and established the literary-historical construct „literary Bosnia“ which was based on the theory of the history of regional / provincial literature. By „literary Bosnia“ he meant everything that was its „provincial features“: folk history, genealogy, specific speech (dialect - ikavica), lifestyle (Muslims), and the canonical line consisted of Bosniak writers from Safvet-bega Bašagić, Musa Ćazim Ćatić, Edhem Mulabdić, Ahmed Muradbegović, to Alija Nametk, Enver Čolaković, Murat Šuvalić etc.Since in this period the pretensions towards Bosnia and Bosnian Muslims (Bosniaks) were also part of the Serbian national ideology, Jurčić's „literary Bosnia“ can be understood as a counterbalance to the then established Kršić's literary-historical construct „narrative Bosnia“. Unlike Kršić's „narrative Bosnia“, whose canonical line was mostly made up of Bosnian Serb writers (Ćorović, Kočić, Andrić, Ćopić, etc.), Jurčić's „literary Bosnia“ was made up of Bosniak writers as „the purest element of the Croatian people“.
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