The Return of Slovene Emigrant Literature

Transcription

1 RETURN EMIGRATION 1 The Return of Slovene Emigrant Literature Janja Žitnik Before I begin dealing with the process of the at first gradual and then radically accelerated return of Slovene emigrant literature to its parental space, I must briefly outline what it is that we mean by Slovene emigrant literature The beginning of literary creativity by Slovene emigrants dates from the first half of the eighteenth century. The most characteristic form of emigrant literature in this period was the missionary letter, while prominent among other forms were travel writing, autobiography, and some poetry. In the 1920s and 1930s Slovene emigrants developed their literary activities significantly, particularly in North and South America, and, to a lesser extent, in Europe; in the USA their literary creativity was even at that time considerably diversified and encompassed all types of literature. In the second half of the last century Slovene emigrant literature, particularly lyric poetry, also enjoyed a flowering in Australia, while in the Americas and Europe, strengthened in this period by new generations of writers, it approached in terms of quality the average literary level of literature in Slovenia, in many cases even surpassing it. Slovene emigrant writers we have recorded around 300 of them have contributed something over 500 books to the treasury of Slovene literature and countless publications in literary journals. 1 Their contribution in the Slovene language represents an important widening of the thematic and empirical span covered by Slovene national literature. 2 Through their publications in foreign languages they bring elements of the Slovene literary and cultural tradition to the literature of the majority nations of their new homelands. Until recently, Slovene emigrant literature had not been regarded in Slovenia as a constituent part of Slovene national literature and culture. It had been neglected by central Slovene cultural media, literary science and educational programs. The work of emigrant authors had mostly been published abroad, either by their own emigrant publishing houses and in their emigrant papers or by the Slovene minority press just across the Slovene national border. 3 Emigrants publications in Slovenia were rare. Their literary work was barely included in the basic surveys of Slovene literature; it was even less present in the central cultural journals. Especially in the first decades after World War II the cultural and political circumstances in Slovenia much prevented rather than encouraged its integration into the central Slovene culture. In the seventies some oppor-

2 tunities were opened for the beginning of its return, a process which in 1990 suddenly surpassed the extent of individual scientific interest, personal contacts with emigrant writers and occasional emigrant literary publications in a small number of cultural journals or at a select number of book publishers in their native land, and eventually became a general characteristic of the contemporary original cultural offer in Slovenia. To summarize the results of a detailed analysis of the changing presence of emigrant literature in the central Slovene culture, I shall give just a few eloquent facts. During the first eight years of the past decade more emigrant literary books were published in Slovenia than in all previous periods together, ever since 1834, when the first emigrant book appeared. Only one anthology of emigrant literature was published in Slovenia before 1990, while all the others appeared in the first few years of Slovene independence. In the nineties the presence of emigrant literature in the central media, particularly in major cultural journals, essentially increased. The same is true of its inclusion in the fundamental works of Slovene literary history, i.e. in synthetic surveys and lexicons. The first more or less complete systematic survey of this literature appeared in 1999, while in 1996 and 2001 Slovene emigrant writers were more extensively included in synthetic overviews of Slovene literature and in the central Slovene literary lexicon than ever before. The number of researchers into Slovene emigrant literature and the number of their monographs and other scholarly or popular publications dealing with this subject substantially increased in the first half of the nineties. In the field of education, we can for the time being speak only of a partial integration of this literature into the university study program. The confirmed textbooks and reading books for teaching Slovene literature at primary and secondary schools do not even mention emigrant literature, although with its inclusion in fundamental works of Slovene literary history the basic condition for its integration into elementary and secondary educational contents has been fulfilled. Only in the last two years have we been able to publish and promote two educational videotapes on this subject for primary and secondary schools. 4 This new interest in emigrant culture and in particular in literature made it possible for a considerable part of the most renowned emigrant writers to join the actual remigrants to Slovenia once it had proclaimed political independence. Among the push and pull factors which have been crucial in this process is the Argentinean economic crisis, which has even influenced the decision of some members of the second generation emigrant writers to move to their fatherland. The most important factors for the decision of the first post-war generation of emigrant authors to remigrate were an increased feeling of homesickness at the time of their retirement as well as some radical changes in Slovene cultural policy, which opened several opportunities for the remigrants employment in certain editorial offices and, finally, also the fact that the selection of authors for literary awards in Slovenia has no longer been based on ideological criteria. In 1993 Slovene-Argentinean writer,

3 RETURN EMIGRATION 3 Zorko Simčič was the first Slovene emigrant to obtain the most prominent national award in the domain of culture, the Prešeren Award. 5 A year later, he returned to Slovenia and revived his literary activity. At the end of the eighties, Andrej Rot, a writer of the second generation of post-war emigrants and at that time President of the major international Slovene emigrants association called the Slovene Cultural Action, said to me during his visit to Ljubljana: We (the second generation emigrants, born abroad) would be willing to come and live here if we were offered more creative jobs in our fatherland than we are in our native land. A year later, Rot was offered the post of editor-in-chief of a newly founded Slovene daily, and moved to Slovenia with his family. In 1993 he was appointed director of the national radio programs. Some other prominent emigrant authors, such as Bert Pribac from Australia, Lev Detela and Milena Merlak Detela from Austria, Venčeslav Šprager from Germany and Ifigenija Simonovič from the United Kingdom, decided approximately at the same time to live alternately in their two homelands to mention just a few of those who have at least partially returned. This made it much easier for them to keep in closest touch with both cultures and to further develop their roles of intercultural mediators. 6 All of them are, of course, bilingual writers. As I have stressed in the beginning, those Slovene emigrant writers who continue to live abroad have recently succeeded to return to their native land s culture by means of their literary publications there. For those who have been writing only or mostly in Slovene language, their literary return to their native land has not been controversial. There are though a number of members of the first or second generation post-war emigrants who have become successful writers in other languages, and their cultural return to Slovenia is much more questionable. 7 Recently the number of writers of Slovene descent born in other countries has been increasing and new names are appearing in their ranks practically every year. Many of these cite the majority language of the country as their mother tongue in population censuses, although on the other hand at least some of them still cultivate their ties with the culture of their ancestors. Because their practical link with the immigrant community, and with Slovenia, is growing ever weaker, it is becoming increasingly difficult for us in Slovenia to follow in their entirety the paths by which these writers in foreign languages transfer the Slovene literary tradition, mentality, spiritual values and other characteristics into foreign cultures. Their mission is increasingly turning from the strengthening of Slovene ethnic identity within the emigrant community towards enriching the cultural treasury of their multiethnic homeland with cultural elements of the nation to which they are linked by their ethnic origin. Thus they more and more frequently aim their literary work at a language area which is much wider than the Slovene one. At present the share of Slovene emigrant literary publications in the mother tongue, viewed as a whole, is only slightly greater than half. This means that the share of their publications in the majority language of their

4 4 AEMI JOURNAL 2003 new homelands is growing.the contemporary trend in the choice of language within the framework of literary creativity is also affected by a series of other factors. Among these are the circumstances which condition the deviation of the practical implementation of multicultural policy from its theoretical suppositions. This is something which Slovene emigrant writer Cvetka Kocjančič attempts to summarise in her report on the experiences of the Slovene community in Canada. The lack of relevant literary selectors in the allocation of state subsidies for the printing of literary works in the languages of minority ethnic communities alongside the contraction of budgetary funds for culture in general is certainly among the most urgent problems facing the consistent implementation of multicultural policy. A significant obstacle is also represented by inadequate systems for notifying potential candidates about these subsidies, which to a large extent is conditioned by conflicts within the immigrant communities themselves. Kocjančič points out: The Canadian state has for the most part treated the publishing of ethnic newspapers as something which should be financed by subscriptions and advertisements. A similar situation has applied to radio media: Ethnic radio broadcasts have not obtained direct state financial support and have maintained themselves through advertisements and funds contributed by the ethnic community. 8 As a result, Slovene cultural journals, radio broadcasts and literary publishing activities in these communities are disappearing, 9 while another significant factor is undoubtedly the constant fall in the number of writers (and readers) of emigrant works in the mother tongue. We encounter a similar phenomenon with all the older emigrant nations, particularly the Scandinavians: there is no longer a significant new influx of their countrymen to the countries to which they themselves emigrated en masse in the past. 10 An almost identical curve of ethnic cultural activity in the new homeland can be traced in most cases where mass emigration to a given country in a specific period has been followed by a long period of emigration by small groups or individuals. In the beginning the organizational initiatives of the new immigrants are oriented more towards the social sphere than to the cultural sphere. This of course particularly applies to predominantly economic migration. For the full cultural development of the immigrant community basic material conditions first have to be met. This is followed by the cultural flowering of the ethnic community, which usually lasts a few decades depending on the duration of the mass immigration of its first generation. In cases where the immigration wave lasted longer, the age structure of the first generation has a correspondingly greater span; within the first generation of a single wave of immigrants we talk about different age groups or even about different first generations of immigrants. With the aging of the last of the first generations of immigrants and the simultaneous aging of the second generation of earlier immigrants, who are generally more actively involved in ethnic organizations and societies than the children of later immigrants within

5 RETURN EMIGRATION 5 the framework of a given wave of immigration, the arc of the curve illustrating the extent and quality of ethnic cultural activity turns sharply downwards. Because of reduced publishing possibilities in emigration, emigrant writers now more and more frequently turn to publishing houses and magazines in their original homeland, provided that the eventual political obstacles facing their literary return have been removed. Completely different rules determine the cultural image of those nations which back in the fairly distant past accepted life in a diaspora as a more or less permanent fact and found more durable strategies of ethno-cultural and language survival. The purpose and the consequence of the current process of Slovene literary return is a permanent integration of Slovene emigrant literature into the treasury of national literature and culture. Within the frame of dealing with this process as I wrote in the last issue of Two Homelands a question of the extent and the borders of national literature arises: which literary works by Slovene emigrants and their descendants belong into the framework of Slovene literature? We could say in a simplified definition that Slovene literature comprises literary works written in the Slovene language. 11 On the other hand the central surveys of Slovene literature include in their treating some literary works in other languages and even some writers who wrote exclusively in a foreign language. If we consider national literature a uni-sense term, meaning the literature of a nationality group with one native language, then its determination with the national language is not questionable. As the modern notion of a nation from the viewpoint of ethnic, cultural and language affiliation is no longer uni-sense, national culture, literature or even national languages cannot be unisense terms either. In the contemporary social reality a nation from the ethnic, language and cultural viewpoints exists on several levels. Thus a nation s culture also exists on several levels; and if we are ready to look upon national literature from a wider angle, it too exists on several levels. The question of an integration of the foreign-language literature of autochthonous and immigrant minorities into the common national culture of an ethnically diversified nation presents only the other side of the question of an integration of foreign-language emigrant literature into the source culture. Translation, evaluation and integration of foreign-language emigrant and immigrant literature into the national culture are significant for a successful consolidation of cultural identity of a modern nation. The Slovene national cultural program states that the Slovene language is an essential element of cultural identity and a basis of national identity; 12 which of course explicitly refers to the nation, culture and national identity in a narrower meaning of the word. Such role of Slovene language namely does not refer to those citizens of the Republic of Slovenia whose non-slovene ethnicity or language adherence by no means excludes their Slovene national identity, neither to those Slovenes in the diaspora whose foreign national and language affiliation does not exclude their Slovene ethnic and cultural identity. The

6 6 AEMI JOURNAL 2003 term national literature can thus have a double meaning: 1. the literary work of a nation (in our case of Slovenes and those Non-Slovenes who have been integrated into Slovene culture) regardless of the language; 2. the literary work in the majority national language. In no aspect shall we jeopardize our majority language by doing what many other nations have done, namely by broadening adequately our understanding of Slovene identity, Slovene national culture and literature and by adjusting our understanding of these notions with the polyvalent language and cultural relations in the contemporary Slovene society, which are a consequence of its old members going abroad and coming back, and of its new members coming from abroad. As the ethnic boundaries in the framework of a modern nation are vanishing, the language boundaries in the framework of a contemporary national culture and literature are also fading out. This process does not represent a threat to the national languages, literatures and cultures; on the contrary in this process, new living-spaces and forms are being created for them. As it has turned out in most other national cultures with the mobility of its members and with the changing of its ethnicity and language structure Slovene culture as well is not being impoverished or polluted but is within the perpetual transformation of global ethnic and language structure being modernized and at a given moment strengthened. The understanding of this (in Slovenia still utterly unpopular) fact is an essential precondition which can open the door for a further and much more substantial return of emigrant literature to a redefined space in the parental culture, a return which can only revive and strengthen the national culture as such. Notes 1 Their 500 books and a considerable part of their

7 RETURN EMIGRATION 7 literary contributions published in periodicals are discussed and analyzed in: J. Žitnik and H. Glušič (ed.), Slovenska izseljenska književnost 1 3, Ljubljana: Založba ZRC & Rokus, Jože Pogačnik, Književnost v zamejstvu in zdomstvu, Slovenska književnost III, Ljubljana: DZS, 2001, pp Roundtable Press and Emigration, Dve Domovini/Two Homelands, 10, 1999, pp J. Žitnik, Besedna umetnost slovenskih izseljencev in njeno mesto v sodobni slovenski kulturi, Dve domovini/two Homelands, 14, 2001, pp FP (France Pibernik), Zorko Simčič, Slovenska književnost, Ljubljana: Cankarjeva založba, 1996, p This fact was underlined in an interview with Zorko Simčič, Bert Pribac and Ifigenija Simonovič which took place within the Evening of Emigrant Literature, Ljubljana, KUD France Prešeren, July 2, Andrijan Lah, Pregled onkraj literarnozgodovinskih okvirov, Delo, Književni listi, August 5, 1999, pp (Both quotations from): Letter from Cvetka Kocjančič to Janja Žitnik, undated, received September 24, (Author s private archive). 9 There were at least 128 periodicals published by Slovene emigrants between 1891 and 1945 (Jože Bajec, Slovensko izseljensko časopisje , Ljubljana: Slovenska izseljenska matica, 1980). After the Second World War 74 Slovene immigrant papers existed only in Argentina (Marjan Pertot, Bibliografija slovenskega tiska v Argentini : II. del časopisje, Trieste: Knjižnica Dušana Černeta, 1991). Today there are about 30 titles of Slovene emigrant periodicals still being published. 10 There were at least 128 periodicals published by Slovene emigrants between 1891 and 1945 (Jože Bajec, Slovensko izseljensko časopisje , Ljubljana: Slovenska izseljenska matica, 1980). After the Second World War 74 Slovene immigrant papers existed only in Argentina (Marjan Pertot, Bibliografija slovenskega tiska v Argentini : II. del časopisje, Trieste: Knjižnica Dušana Černeta, 1991). Today there are about 30 titles of Slovene emigrant periodicals still being published. 11 Janko Kos, Književnost, Enciklopedija Slovenije, Book 5, Ljubljana: Mladinska knjiga, 1991, p Slovenski nacionalni kulturni program: Predlog, Ljubljana: Nova revija, 2000, p. 17.

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