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WORK TITLE: Fragile Travelers
WORK NOTES: trans by Jovanka Kalaba
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE: 1959
WEBSITE:
CITY: Cacak
STATE:
COUNTRY: Serbia
NATIONALITY: Serbian
http://www.worldliteraturetoday.org/2016/november/fragile-travelers-jovanka-zivanovic * http://www.dalkeyarchive.com/product/fragile-travelers/ * http://eurolitnetwork.com/%E2%80%8Erivetingreviews-david-hebblethwaite-reviews-fragile-travelers-by-jovanka-zivanovic/ * http://www.asymptotejournal.com/criticism/jovanka-zivanovic-fragile-travelers/ * http://www.complete-review.com/reviews/yugo/zivanovicj.htm
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Born 1959, in Teočin, Gornji Milanovac, Serbia.
EDUCATION:University of Kragujevac Faculty of Economics, graduated.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer.
WRITINGS
SIDELIGHTS
Born in Teočin, Serbia, in 1959, Jovanka Živanović is a fiction writer, publishing the books Govor nalicja in 2002 and Putnici od stakla: Roman in 2008 in her native language. The latter title became her first book in English, Fragile Travelers, as translated by Jovanka Kalaba of the University of Belgrade. Živanović holds a degree from the University of Kragujevac Faculty of Economics and currently lives in Čačak.
The English version of Fragile Travelers was published in 2016. With a blend of magical realism, existentialism, and astute observation of human relationships, the slim book delves into different kinds of love, the search for meaning in a soulless world, and the influences of global culture. In the story, confident and successful architect Petar Naumov goes out to get coffee and then suddenly vanishes. No one knows what has happened to him, not even his loving wife Andelija, who desperately searches for him. Petar, meanwhile, realizes that he has somehow been inserted into the dream world of emotionally empty and fragile high-school art teacher Emilija Savic, a thirtysomething woman with whom he has a passing acquaintance.
As he lives within Emilija’s dreams, Petar sees how desperately she wants to connect with someone, despite having a satisfying relationship with her life partner, Zarko, a lawyer and poet. Petar and Emilija both come to see the emptiness they are living, and as Petar takes on the role of guardian angel, they try to console and eventually rescue each other. Along the way they learn why their paths have crossed in this most unusual way. “We realise just how deeply the characters are yearning for something more in life. … There are some kinds of need that Petar and Emilija can only express in the dream,” declared reviewer David Hebblethwaite in the European Literature Network.
In Emilija’s dream world, Petar sees her search for meaning, religious significance, self-actualization, and art as paths to a higher cause. Throughout the book, Živanović uses Judeo-Christian imagery and philosophical musings, such as a crown of thorns and a debate with Plato, as well as a Yugoslav rock band, a Syrian mystic, and famous American actors. Calling the book a “not quite divine but delightful comedy,” Michele Levy in World Literature Today further observed: “Several strategies increase the mental play Travelers provides, including irony and literalized metaphors and adages.”
Živanović’s book plays on the Serbian cultural expression “Putting your brain out to pasture,” as Petar, in the bizarre imagery of a dream, lets his brain out to run around in the grass like a dog. Online at Asymptote journal, a contributor wrote that Kalaba, in her translator’s note, “dwells on what she calls the novel’s ‘literalized metaphors,’ whereby a common expression is taken and enacted literally.” The contributor added: “The novel is thus at once a metaphysical mystery, a spiritual journey, and a platonic love story. It blends the genres it anticipates at the beginning, but with a twist.” Writing in Publishers Weekly, a reviewer commented: “Zivanovic suspends reality in this delicate, beautiful short book to explore the questions plaguing humankind” and the possibility of connecting with a soul mate.
In an interview with Kalaba on the Dalkey Archive Press Web site, Živanović explained: “It’s a story about longing for beauty and harmony, about the need for love in the most sublime sense of the word. It’s about searching for something that can’t be found in this world. Now, if one’s hunger for harmony is insatiable, a prerequisite for a life worth living, then such a world needs to be constructed. I constructed it.” Živanović added that illusion is not inconstant or entirely unreal but rather has “vitality, and caloricity too”; it provides “the energy that keeps us alive when all other life supports are shut off.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Publishers Weekly, April 18, 2016, review of Fragile Travelers, p. 88.
World Literature Today, November-December, 2016, Michele Levy, review of Fragile Travelers, p. 84.
ONLINE
Asymptote, http://www.asymptotejournal.com/ (March 1, 2017), Stiliana Milkova, review of Fragile Travelers.
Complete Review, http://www.complete-review.com/ (September 5, 2016), M.A. Orthofer, review of Fragile Travelers.
Dalkey Archive Press Web site, https://www.dalkeyarchive.com/ (March 1, 2017), Jovanka Kalaba, “A Conversation with Jovanka Živanović.”
European Literature Network, http://eurolitnetwork.com/ (July 15, 2016), David Hebblethwaite, review of Fragile Travelers.
Jovanka Zivanovic was born in 1959 in Teocin - Gornji Milanovac municipality, Serbia. She graduated from the Faculty of Economics in Kragujevac. She lives in Cacak. Fragile Travelers is her first work translated into English.
A Conversation with Jovanka Živanović
A Conversation with Jovanka Živanović by Jovanka Kalaba
Fragile Travelers is now available for purchase.
How do you see your book “Putnici od stakla” (“Fragile Travelers”)? What impulse drove you to write it?
It’s a story about longing for beauty and harmony, about the need for love in the most sublime sense of the word. It’s about searching for something that can’t be found in this world. Now, if one’s hunger for harmony is insatiable, a prerequisite for a life worth living, then such a world needs to be constructed. I constructed it.
I don’t write every day. I write only when I have to, which is when haunting themes refuse to be ignored any longer, when they have to be written down. The creation of the novel “Putnici od stakla” was not strategic, and it wasn’t long. It somehow “spilled” out of me. The preparations were long, though, and they weren’t visible. Everything about writing a novel like this is an internal thing—that’s where it all begins, happens, and ends. External events such as writing, as esthetically spectacular as they may be, are just a creative reaction to a great agitation which takes place deep inside the writer’s being.
Who are the fragile travelers? There’s a chapter in the book titled Travelers Made of Glass Tread Thorny Roads.
They’re hypersensitive people, loyal servants to empathy, those tortured by that hunger for harmony I’ve already mentioned. Since reality is often harsh, they suffer a lot. They’re like slippery slugs looking for shelter and finding themselves among prickly weeds. It can have only one meaning for them: every move they make will be accompanied by stinging pain. There’s a sentence I wrote down when I was a high school student. (Unfortunately I don’t know who the author is.) It says: “Peonies find natural what happens to peonies, but it scares them to see the same happen to lilies”.
It’s lilies that this novel is about.
The novel makes it clear that you, as the author, feel comfortable in the realm of the imagination. Dreams, illusions, longings—what are they for you?
They’re often signs and signposts. They’re part of the thought process and they guide the hand that writes. It’s hardly unimportant, don’t you think?
My experience tells me that illusion isn’t some feathery or inconstant thing. It has the vitality, and caloricity too. Being able to produce longing, it’s wholesome food. And longing, as I see it, is the energy that keeps us alive when all other life supports are shut off.
The main protagonists, Emilija and Petar, barely know each other in real life. In the realm of dreams they achieve the utmost degree of intimacy: their two heads think as one (“…[their] brains liquefied and were flowing one into the other, becoming one in a way that denied a possibility of them parting ever again.”) What’s the nature of their relationship?
Most of people who’ve read the novel understood it as a love story—as a dreamed but never realized love between Emilija and Petar. For me, as the author, that was unexpected. Yes, it’s a story about love, but in a form unattainable in real life.
The communication between Ema and Petar happens in a transcendental space, beyond the limits of experience. Their relationship isn’t founded on the real. They aren’t attracted to each other by the magnetic force of falling in love, which is how, as we’ve all experienced, falling in love usually works among us earthlings.
Petar’s recurrent presence in Ema’s dreams is the one of a guardian angel, which is a spiritual category. She gets used to his presence in her dreams. She begins needing him. After a nightmare from which she wakes in tears, it’s his name that she, quite naturally, calls out, the same way people utter prayers in the moments of danger, or call out the name of any archetypal figure in charge of love and caring: the name of the Mother, or of the God one believes in. The protagonists’ perception of their transcendental experiences in real life is one of wonderment, and they don’t seek to find each other there—they wait for the next dream. The place of their encounter isn’t on firm ground.
Emilija and Petar don’t develop physical intimacy outside this very special dimension of their communication. Why is that so? What would they lose if they did?
They’d lose everything. They’ve experienced sameness, the union of two souls, a feeling which surpasses the pleasures of bodily gratification. I hope that the readers of this novel will come to love and understand fragile travelers, and be able to connect with the idea that there are things we can admire so much that we tremble before the secret they carry. These are the situations when our corporeal selves make a dignified retreat, when we feel our very unworthiness of their presence.
I find the treatment of male characters in your novel very refreshing. None of them is a typical Balkan alpha male begging to be deconstructed. Žarko, the lawyer, is a tender soul, trying to find a way to reach the heart of his loved one. He hugs her while she, in her sleep, says another man’s name. Petar is at the same time a guardian angel and a very sexual man… You’ve absolved them all, male and female characters alike. Where did you find so much love for them?
You’re asking me about male characters. I find it easy to be a he and write from this grammatical perspective. The manuscript that I’m currently working on features a he as the main protagonist. I guess that, in my nature, anima and animus are quite evenly distributed.
I didn’t build my characters in advance. Sometimes when I’d finish a portion of the story, even the plot would be a surprise and a miracle to me. What I had in store were dreams, and nothing more. Are Petar and Žarko two beautiful literary miracles? That much I don’t know. All I know is that the story created them itself, driven by my need and desire for them to be exactly what they turned out to be. I’m sure that all of us have a Petar or a Žarko somewhere in our vicinity, however it’s difficult to notice them since they rarely appear in their pure form. Let’s assume that I managed to create them in pure form and place them in a book. I love them.
How come that, in your novel, we find Søren Kierkegaard and Bishop Njegoš sitting at the same table and having a conversation? What are a Danish philosopher and a Serbian writer and philosopher from Montenegro doing together?
Those who are the same look for and find each other—if nowhere else, then in a novel. I thought that putting the two contemporaries at the same table was the right thing to do. They were born in the same year, however were separated geographically at opposite ends of the European continent; they were both sensitive and wise. As any truly grand person would do, they’ve forgiven me for making them supporting characters in this story. They’re important to me, each of them in his own way. For Søren Kierkegaard, the first existentialist philosopher, always in search for his own truth, the individual is all and the crowd is a lie. Reading his works was, for me, a dramatic and a quite personal spiritual revolution.
As for Petar Petrović Njegoš, he achieved in himself an almost impossible duality: he was a poet and a ruler. As the ruler of Montenegro he had to be primitive and tough—as a poet, he was a great thinker. He wrote Light of Microcosm, an important, ingenious, poetic and philosophical work, locked in his room for six days. Burdened with responsibility for his country, he couldn’t afford to create at a slower pace, in his moments of leisure. His work had grown and matured inside him, and when it was finished he had to put it down on paper—there was nothing else for the ruler to do but to let the poet take over.
As one of the most important Serbian writers, Isidora Sekulić, said about Njegoš, he had that greatest of knowledge, which you either have within yourself or you don’t have it at all. The same applies to Kierkegaard.
We can, and we should read our contemporaries, but we shouldn’t be surprised to discover that certain questions that trouble us today were answered already by people who lived two or more centuries before us. They’re our next of kin.
I find this book deeply moral. It doesn’t preach, it isn’t dogmatic or pretentious, it’s simply moral. In these cynical times, whenever we come across the word “God”, we are inclined to assume that either some dogma or irony, negation, aggressive atheism awaits us further into the text. Your novel doesn’t fall into any of these traps. What’s your attitude to religion? Are you a believer? What is God for you?
I speak very rarely and reluctantly about religion in general, and especially about my own religious feelings. I’m very sensitive to verbal windiness of such a delicate area.
I believe that faith is a matter of every man’s innermost feelings and thoughts, and that it should stay there. I consider myself religious, but not in the ritual sense of the word. I believe that the invisible rules the visible in every aspect—from the senses which, inside of us, create stories and mythologies, to the less vocal, but not less convincing signals from the metaphysical, transcendental realms. The degree to which these signals are heard and understood depends on the degree of spirituality of each individual. Whether we call it logos, universe or God, it’s always light. Our place of birth, our family and our social environment place us in a pre-set religious mould. When I say God, I say Christ—it’s the archetypical offer I got, and it agrees with me.
And again—the light. I believe that everyone is born with a spiritual potential, with at least a tiny beam of the universal light of God. It’s the beam that comes into us from eternity, and it’s up to us to preserve it and carry it in us for the rest of our earthly existence. It isn’t easy: spiritual and bodily needs; hunger for all sorts of pleasures; our fight to survive and find our place under the sun—these all work against the most precious thing we have, our essential selves.
“Putnici od stakla” was published in 2008. To this day, its situation in Serbia has been paradoxical: most of people have never heard of it, and the handful of those who have are in raptures about it. How do you see this disparity and the fact that the novel received such negligible publicity?
The news that their work is going to be published is a joyful moment in every writer’s life. I experienced it when I received a phone call from Vladislav Bajac, the director of Geopoetika Publishing House, which eventually published the novel. He called me while reading the manuscript—I think he was in the middle of Chapter 7—in the voice of an exhilarated reader. Now I know that this was a meeting of two people with similar sensibilities, writer and editor, who then set out to find a third – the reader. The author – the publisher – the reader? It is a circle that needs to be closed in the best possible way. Reading is a voiceless communication between the writer and the consumer. What the writer gives of himself or herself needs to match the reader’s power to understand it. And that’s it. Misunderstandings happen if these two aren’t compatible. Also, if a literary work gets passed over in silence, with neither praise nor criticism, it becomes invisible, as if it didn’t exist, and in my opinion this always reflects communication problems on a larger scale, in the society and among people in general.
There’s a big problem with contemplative prose and poetry in this situation. Their authors don’t exercise their gift unless they must. They have a great urge to take all that has been maturing inside of them onto paper or onto a screen. Only after they’ve scratched deep into the place where it hurts the most, does a piece of literature come to life. Still, it’s a gradual process. The work in the making takes upon itself to communicate with future readers, to the highest possible degree, what the author feels and thinks. I’m talking about the minority that writes and barely gets published, or doesn’t get published at all; and those who wait for such books. They all wait, in fact, both writers and readers—in solitude! It isn’t something that bestseller charts talk about. I was fortunate to read some of the “difficult” books that, at certain points, speak to you directly. When they do, you literally drop them out of your hands—you’re never the same again after reading them.
Do you think that the case of “Fragile Travelers” is revealing of the general state of publishing in Serbia?
I admit I’m not very well informed of the state of the publishing and literary scene in Serbia, or elsewhere for that matter. I manage to find the books that I want to read, and that’s enough for me. As much as I consciously try to find retreat in a private place where I can be deaf and blind to the general deterioration of social and human values, this cannot be escaped. It’s not just the case with the Serbian society; it’s a global matter. In any case, these are bad times for good literature. We hear about the commercialization of culture in abstract terms, and we forget that culture, real culture, cannot be commercialized. It can, of course, be marginalized and ignored; in the marketing sense of the word, it can be banalized. But a work of art will find its way to its consumer, however long and slow the path it must take. I truly believe that.
How do you feel about the fact that your novel was translated into English and that it will find itself on a huge literary market?
It’s completely magical to me. You know, my works sometimes waited for a long time for an editor’s or publisher’s reply, and my sense of decency always instructed me to be patient. I’d get into a state of resignation, in which my desire to have a positive response still existed, but with less hope that it would ever happen unless a miracle occurs. This book had three very quiet and modest promotions in the vicinity of my town. Although deprived of any kind of media attention, the book was passed from hand to hand. The ones who liked it weren’t silent about it and recommended it further, and the book found its way to the readers.
I’m seeing my book off into the world with the best of wishes. Effective marketing always leaves a distinct possibility of the book ending up in the sorrowful position of an uninvited guest—by means of persuasion, by unhappy choice or ill-judged present, it will most surely reach consumers that will not be interested. However, such sacrifice is to be made so that the book can reach those it was written for.
Anticipating that my book will find its readers somewhere far away, in a different continent, in a skyscraper condo, or a cottage where they will savor a moment of solitude while reading it, fills me with great joy. If, by any chance, anything written in this book moves or disturbs them in the way that usually happens when we feel other peoples’ lived experience as our own, then we’ll achieve an intimacy rarely found even in our closest surrounding. Spiritual connections were never a matter of flesh and blood, anyway. When the author and the reader meet in this way, then writing is justified. When they don’t, there’s no justification.
LC control no.: n 2004026841
LC classification: PG1420.36.I935
Personal name heading:
ZÌŒivanovicÌ, Jovanka, 1959-
Found in: ZÌŒivanovicÌ, Jovanka. Govor NalicÌŒja, 2002: t.p.
(Z̆ivanovicÌ Jovanka) bio note (b. 1959)
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Fragile Travelers
Publishers Weekly. 263.16 (Apr. 18, 2016): p88.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
Fragile Travelers
Jovanka Zivanovic, trans. from the Serbian by Jovanka Kalaba. Dalkey Archive (Ingram, dist.), $14 trade paper (128p) ISBN 978-1-94315003-8
Serbian-born Zivanovic's first work translated into English tells the extraordinary story of how Petar Naumov, husband and architect, disappears from his home and finds himself trapped in the dreams of Emilija Savic, an emotionally troubled art teacher looking for meaning and clarity in everyday life. The importance of love, wisdom, and the duality of spirituality and reality are explored through the dream interactions between Petar and Emilija, who are mere acquaintances in the waking world. Emilija's dreams, at times terrifying and confusing, guide the two oneironauts through enduring existential crises around morality, finding meaning in life, and persevering through hard times. Their individual introspections seek to make sense of Emilija's dreams, and the truths discovered there point the way toward finding meaning in their lives. Petar and Emilija's relationships with their respective partners in the physical world--Petar's hardworking and doting wife, Andelija, and Emilia's life partner, Zarko, a levelheaded lawyer turned poet who basks in his wife's creativity--exemplify the different kinds of human love and support. Zivanovic suspends reality in this delicate, beautiful short book to explore the questions plaguing humankind and pay homage to the power and importance of having a connection with another--a soul mate to offer support in life and in the darkest corners of the mind. (July)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Fragile Travelers." Publishers Weekly, 18 Apr. 2016, p. 88. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA450361256&it=r&asid=f052c258ad6321d647aea6f8340c02db. Accessed 24 Jan. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A450361256
Jovanka Zivanovic. Fragile Travelers
Michele Levy
World Literature Today. 90.6 (November-December 2016): p84.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 University of Oklahoma
http://www.worldliteraturetoday.com
Full Text:
Jovanka ivanovic. Fragile Travelers. Trans. Jovanka Kalaba. Victoria, Texas. Dalkey Archive Press. 119 pages.
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
Like many postmodern Yugoslav novels, Jovanka ivanovic's slim debut, Fragile Travelers, mines magical realism in its shifts between, and merging of, reality and fantasy. In its first chapter, "Coffee Lovers Move in Mysterious Ways," Petar Naumov goes out for coffee and becomes "stuck in" Emilija Savic's dream. This opening sets Travelers' tone, plot, and theme: a search for meaning in a soulless global culture that reads like a Woody Allen riff on Kafka.
At base level, name etymologies signify both worlds. Common Slavic names, Petar and Ema, carry spiritual connotations: Peter, the "rock" upon which Jesus built his church; Ema, the universal or whole. Naumov signifies the son of Nahum, a Hebrew prophet, and Savic evokes St. Sava, the Enlightener.
If Ernas earnest lawyer lover, arko, and Petar's faithful insurance saleswoman wife, Andelija, contentedly fill their mates' needs for human love, art historian Ema and successful architect Petar, led by a love of beauty, quest for "their true selves ... while caught in the snares of middle-class reality." Thus, at a crucial moment, when each must lecture students on their futures, Petar has one read from Maslow on the need for meaning and self-actualization, while Ema warns that art alone provides the "true path to a higher cause."
Religious and classical images heighten the spiritual dimension. Evoking Plato, the pilgrims first meet in a cave from whose abyss Petar helps Ema flee to a serene plateau. Ema wears a crown of thorns; Petar feels "crowned." Petar becomes a "guardian angel," "savior," and even "the Jewish God," while Ema dreams herself pregnant with a python, Delphi's first guardian--the snake signaling rebirth and eternity.
Parallel allusions further instantiate opposing realms. To the secular belong Belo dugme and Kaliopi, Yugoslav rock bands; Guca, Serbia's annual trumpet festival; Vangelis; Brad Pitt's The American. More substantial references to Maslow, Kierkegaard, Njegos, and Isaac of Nineveh underscore the spiritual. Maslow's hierarchy, Petar's guide, values a love beyond sex. In Ema's dream, Kierkegaard and Njegos concur that terrestrial life torments seekers. And Isaac, the seventhcentury Syrian mystic, explains that Petar and Ema share a bond "beyond this world" that can endure since both planes of existence intersect.
Several strategies increase the mental play Travelers provides, including irony and literalized metaphors and adages. Thus, for example, alone after his fine new work is unveiled, "something to take my hat off to" Petar takes off everything and lets his brain run loose, which it joyfully does. Further, while four chapters portray Andelija and Zarko through an omniscient narrator, sixteen alternate between Ema and Petar, each in first person. But since gender inheres in the Serbian verb form, reading this deft translation means recognizing the speaker from narrative clues.
Appropriately, this not quite divine but delightful comedy ends at a wedding, where the couples exchange greetings. Sustained by their respective earthly loves, platonic soulmates Ema and Petar can now journey between "parallel tracks" to experience both agape and eros.
Michele Levy
North Carolina A&T University
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Levy, Michele. "Jovanka Zivanovic. Fragile Travelers." World Literature Today, vol. 90, no. 6, 2016, p. 84+. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA469459962&it=r&asid=81d2a797866c06d43033d21aa754d49f. Accessed 24 Jan. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A469459962
#RivetingReviews: David Hebblethwaite reviews FRAGILE TRAVELERS by Jovanka Živanović
Jul 15, 2016 • 1 comment
Fragile Travelers is the first book by Serbian writer Jovanka Živanović to appear in English translation. It begins with a disappearance, as architect Petar Naumov vanishes from his apartment, leaving a coffee pot boiling away on the gas stove. Opinions differ on what may have happened, to the point that people can’t even agree on whether a fire gutted the apartment, or whether the burner ran out of fuel just in time. Živanović’s sinuous, digressive prose somehow makes both options seem plausible at the same time; and you get an idea of how treacherous the reality of this novel can be.
What has happened is that Petar has become lost in the dreams of Emilija Savic, an art teacher whom he knows in passing, though their emotional connection is about to become much more profound. The dream world is disorienting, and allows for such absurd images as Petar letting his brain out to scamper around in the grass like a pet dog. According to the introduction by translator Jovanka Kalaba, this is based on the Serbian expression “putting your brain out to pasture”; Kalaba has some interesting insights into the work of translating Živanović’s dense original text.
As the book progresses, however, events take on a more serious complexion, as we realise just how deeply the characters are yearning for something more in life. At one point, Emilija dreams of two philosophers discussing the burden of existence, and sees that even this can bring the right people closer together. She wonders if the same thing will ever happen to her. There are some kinds of need that Petar and Emilija can only express in the dream, and Fragile Travelers enables us to confront for ourselves the same questions that. Živanović’s characters face.
By David Hebblethwaite
Fragile Travelers
By Jovanka Živanović
Translated from the Serbian by Jovanka Kalaba
Published by Dalkey Archive Press, July 2016
Stiliana Milkova reviews Jovanka Živanović's Fragile Travelers
Translated from the Serbian by Jovanka Kalaba (Dalkey Archive Press, 2016)
The first paragraph of Jovanka Živanović’s novel Fragile Travelers, translated from Serbian by Jovanka Kalaba, zooms in, then out, of the mundane circumstances of Petar Naumov’s life. An omniscient narrator informs us in a vertiginous narrative sequence of Petar’s disappearance:
Given how deftly he could bounce the coffee can in his hand, he didn’t have to take off the lid to know that it was empty. He realized that if he wanted coffee, he would have to run down to the kiosk on the ground floor of his building. Such occurrences of his being absent from the apartment, unplanned for and only for a short while, didn’t require much clothing, so Petar, without closing the door behind him, dashed out of the apartment foyer in his slippers. The water he’d left boiling on the gas burner had no other option but to wait. It waited until the last drop, and when it evaporated, the water, logically enough, ceased to be aware of itself and therefore had no means to keep on waiting any longer. And even if it had been able to, there wouldn’t have been anyone to wait for, because Petar wasn’t coming back. Ten days had passed since he left the apartment, and he was now considered a missing person. The disappearance had been reported to the police the same day. The case stalled, however, at the level of a police promise that something would be done, and many days had now passed without any progress.
There is something slightly unsettling about this opening. It begins with a close-up of Petar shaking the coffee can; then follows him out of the apartment and into the foyer; then returns quickly to the apartment where the water on the stove is personified to voice the fact of Petar’s non-return. Fast-forward ten days and the police have made no progress in tracking down the missing man. This swift account of Petar’s disappearance promises a mystery novel. Or perhaps a novel about adultery, as Petar’s wife, Anđelija, suspects he may have abandoned her for a lover; or better yet, a mystery novel with a romantic subplot. But any genre expectations we might have are soon complicated. At the end of the first chapter, the same omniscient narrator announces, matter-of-factly, that “On his way to buy some coffee, Petar had ended up in a woman’s dream—and got stuck there.” And then adds, with a characteristic hint of humor, that “Although modern-day investigative techniques are superior, almost faultless, they’re still powerless when it comes to dreams.”
It is the novel’s job then to penetrate those dreams, to uncover what happened—the whodunnit and why. The book consists of the alternating voices of Petar Naumov, a successful middle-aged architect, and Emilija Savić, a high school art teacher in her late thirties, as they navigate the world of dreams. Emilija, or "Ema," lives two parallel lives. In her dreams she is both Christ- and Madonna-like. She walks on rocks wearing a crown of thorns on her head; she jumps off a cliff and flies away; she wills to life the impossible encounter of two famous philosophers; she nurtures a snake in her womb. In her waking life, she is a shy and absent-minded, good-natured dreamer, who lives with her down-to-earth lawyer boyfriend, Žarko. Ema is a fragile creature, torn between her two existences, between the love she feels for the entire world and the daily disappointments of a petty, crude, and ungrateful reality. Žarko cherishes and protects her in everyday life, but who watches over her in the dream world?
Petar, on the other hand, has been firmly grounded in the here-and-now: he is confident and good-looking, content with his marriage and profession, comfortable in his clothes, apartment, convictions. But as his first-person narration reveals, he suddenly finds himself in Ema’s dreams, playing the role of her guardian angel. Fragile Travelers then proceeds to unravel the mystery of Petar’s presence there. At the beginning, he is unsure whether it is physical attraction or spiritual affinity that has trapped him in a woman’s dream. Believing the former, he goes through a process of self-searching and ritual purification. He plunges himself in the waters of the Danube river to wash away his perceived sins, but also as a kind of linguistic performance. In her translator’s note, Jovanka Kalaba dwells on what she calls the novel’s “literalized metaphors,” whereby a common expression is taken and enacted literally. The Serbian proverb “neće te oprati ni Dunav ni Sava,” which roughly translates to “neither the Danube nor the Sava river will clean you” usually conveys the speaker’s doubt that the moral stain of an immoral act can be washed away. Petar takes this proverb at face value and performs it in order to cleanse himself of his imagined desire for another woman. In this subtle and ingenious way, the novel reminds us that Petar’s sin cannot in fact be washed away because it is not real. And so Petar realizes over the course of the novel that his and Ema’s love is pure and spiritual, the convergence of soulmates destined to be together in the dream world but apart when awake. Their love is one of intellects, not of bodies. “I love that you exist, Petar Naumov,” Ema tells him towards the end of the novel. “This way of existing would have been impossible without you,” Petar responds.
The novel is thus at once a metaphysical mystery, a spiritual journey, and a platonic love story. It blends the genres it anticipates at the beginning, but with a twist: its most enigmatic and intense moments arrive in the dream sequences narrated by Petar and Ema, in their other-worldly experiences, and not in the gray banality of their daily lives. Each of them walks the fragile, painful path of self-discovery and comes to terms with the “parallel tracks” they tread, as Ema calls them. Part of the story’s enigmatic effect derives from the fact that for the first few sentences of each chapter we are unsure who speaks—we hesitate between Petar, Ema, and the omniscient narrator who appears occasionally to give us insight into Anđelija's and Žarko’s characters. Jovanka Kalaba explains in the translator’s note that the Serbian language marks the speaker’s gender and therefore it is clear right away if the speaker is a man or woman. In English, of course, this knowledge is lost, and we have to guess from the context and from the tone, sentiments, and experiences of the speaker. In other words, we need to interpret the text to guess whose voice is narrating. The reader's brief uncertainty about who is speaking—that is, the reader’s momentary hesitation and interpretive work—complements the novel’s oscillation between dream and reality, genres, and voices.
Reading Fragile Travelers, I was reminded of Serbian writers such as Milorad Pavić and Danilo Kiš, whose novels play with genre boundaries, explore the limits of the text, rely on the blurring of dream and reality, dabble in history and mystery, and evoke a sense of Balkan mysticism grounded in local myth and folklore. Fragile Travelers is likewise a novel that plays with genre boundaries, that creates a dream world more physically present and emotionally fraught than the characters’ real lives, and which probes the borders of the narrative, calling attention to its own status as text. For example, I was struck by the omniscient narrator’s account of how Petar’s and Ema’s stories were brought to light. From the very first chapter these two characters are constructed as texts, as words on a page: “This story, too, would have reached a dead end, just like the inquest, had Petar Naumov and Emilija Savić not left written records about their unusual experience.” In this statement the omniscient narrator points to the very novel we are reading since it constitutes the textual account of Ema’s and Petar’s stories. But more importantly, in conjoining their written records, the narrator performs a textual marriage of the two non-lovers, binding them forever within the discursive space of the novel.
In a final twist, the last chapter offers a photographic reproduction of Petar’s handwritten manuscript as proof of the story’s veracity. This inclusion of an artifact further blurs genre boundaries, attributing to the narrative a kind of factual, documentary status. Nonetheless, Petar’s notes are illegible. This illegibility, the omniscient narrator explains, allows for an interpretation of Petar’s and Ema’s dreams that unexpectedly changes the course of events and leads to a satisfying resolution to the novel. Meanwhile, the cursive of Petar’s handwriting points to another key aspect of the text—the pervasive use of italics to mark a range of utterances. Živanović employs italics in a deft and subversive way, making them typographic signs of layered discursive play. They function as quotation marks to signal the discourse of others—either directly, by citing another’s speech, or implicitly, by articulating a common saying or conveying conventional opinions and judgments.
For example, when Ema describes Petar as a successful member of society, she adopts a colloquial expression only to mock it, showing its flatness and meaninglessness: “In a word, happy was the mother who had him.” Or when Petar recollects a particularly successful moment in his career, he quotes another cliché, mimicking commonplace praise: “My accomplishment was really something to take my hat off to.” His mockery becomes evident when shortly thereafter he literally takes off his clothes and sunbathes naked, right next to the praiseworthy monument he has designed. There are countless such examples of Petar or Ema citing conventional language, and especially the way others perceive or talk about the two of them, in italics. All of these examples are suffused with subtle humor or parody of dominant discourses. Jovanka Kalaba has performed a feat rendering these expressions in idiomatic English and demonstrating how the italics mark Petar’s and Ema’s awareness of their own difference, of their not belonging to what Ema calls “harsh, crusted reality.” The italics, in other words, at once imitate the discourse of the status quo and parody it by showing its irrelevance to those “who’d always go for the path less traveled if their hearts told them the path was the right one, although they knew that such paths are always traveled with a spoke in the wheel.”
Jovanka Živanović’s own literary journey can be situated along the path less traveled as well. Published in Serbia in 2008, Fragile Travelers is her first and only novel thus far. Živanović has no formal training in literature and does not belong to the literary establishment; she is an economist living in a small town in Western Serbia, not unlike the setting of her novel. Nonetheless, her literary themes and style are central to modern Serbian narrative. The italics and discursive play, the alternating realities and narrative voices, the confluence of banal and metaphysical, the self-referentiality of the text, and the cross-genre (as Ema puts it in relation to her dreams) nature of the novel, all signal that Fragile Travelers is a postmodern text. And yet, this slim volume does not claim for itself any of the literary gravitas or narrative tour de force that Pavić’s or Kiš’s postmodern novels have been accorded. Although fully deserving of such accolades, its accomplishments also lie elsewhere: it is a subtle, intimate, lyrical, even hopeful and humorous meditation on the human desire for happiness, in one world or another.