On the Patriarchal Idyll of Literary Historiography

In the old family and the wider communal family he sees an ideal, harmonious human community, in which each individual finds safety and security. It can easily solve all the difficulties arising either from sinful inclinations of human nature, or from individual beliefs that deviate from the unwritten norms of collective morality. Each sheep that lost its way has its shepherd who will find it, and bring it back to the flock. A man who devoted himself to a disastrous passion, for example, gambling, a spoiled, headstrong woman who does not care about anything, an irrepressible boy, rejected by the society and thrown out of school, can not and must not fall into ruin, because as soon as they find themselves on the edge of a precipice, they will always find a saving hand that will keep them from falling, and bring them back into the lap of community, where joy and general forgiveness awaits them. Conservative, closed in itself, the community will be open even to a foreigner as soon as he testifies his national and human values. The collective morality and family feeling of brotherhood and solidarity with everybody—these are the values that are the foundations of the patriarchal community.

-Jovan Deretić on Laza Lazarević, Kratka istorija srpske književnosti[A Short History of Serbian Literature]

Since 1980, the journal Serbian Studieshas been published in the U.S. under the auspices of the North American Society for Serbian Studies. A few years ago the journal published a special issue dedicated to Laza Lazarević (1851–91), a Serbian physician and writer who published eight short stories during his life. His literary legacy includes a few other stories, some of which were left unfinished. Lazarević’s short stories were originally published in magazines, and in 1886 they were published as a book entitled Šest pripovedaka(Six Short Stories). They included the stories To Matins with Father for the First Time, The School Icon, Well Done, Robbers!, At the Well, Werther, and The People Will Reward All of This. After this book, Lazarević published only two short stories: The Windand He Knows it All. Seven years after his death, in 1898, his story The German Girlwas published, which the editors reconstructed from fragments of his legacy.

In Serbian literary historiography, Lazarević is known as the founder of the Serbian psychological short story. In the preface of this special issue of Serbian Studies, the author Svetlana Tomić starts from the assumption that Lazarević’s contribution to Serbian literature and culture can be identified and characterized by its subversion of patriarchal ideas, which, at the time, signified a bold and risky venture. More than a century later, Lazarević’s stories are still an integral part of the primary and secondary education curriculum, as well as the study program of Serbian literature. For example, the story To Matins with Father for the First Timeis included in the program implemented in secondary schools and is also studied at the university level. Tomić holds the belief that the fictional aspect of this story has not yet been evaluated in its full potential form, but rather, subjectively interpreted through the prism of longstanding interpretive norms. This review aims to offer an alternative interpretation of this Lazarević story.

The research Tomić conducted in order to publish this issue is part of her ongoing effort to incorporate the concept of feminism in reading strategies of Serbian culture. She claims that the exclusion and misinterpretation of female characters is a process comparable to the exclusion of female authors from the literary canon—both acts are associated with the reductionist construction of Serbian realism and the manipulative strategies of authority. This exclusion leads to the incorrect assumption that there were no female authors, or that their creative work made no impact. Such misconstrued insight obstructs the possibility of a deeper understanding of Serbian realist fiction. Therefore, Tomić compares Lazarević’s stories with stories of his contemporaries and arrives at the conclusion that the academic literary canon was determined by political...