BELGRADE (23 page)

By the end of 1918 Belgrade was the newly liberated capital of the much larger Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. Lena A. Jovičić in her book
Pages from Here and There in Serbia
gives many little portraits of Belgrade from this time. Writing after the First World War, she relates the damage caused by siege, years of enemy occupation and the fierce fighting that occurred when the city was retaken by Serbian forces. Moreover, she describes the rebuilding programme which transformed the city:

The extraordinary building epidemic which held sway for several years after the war, resulted in the town being completely transformed. It not only meant reconstruction, but, one may say, a new city was raised in place of the old one. With unparalleled speed, houses appeared like mushrooms after rain, and although this was but the first step in the great evolution destined to emerge from a heap of ruins, the subsequent stages of progress still continue in a striking manner.

Miloš Crnjanski was also in Belgrade during the early post-war years and left behind his impressions in his 1929 article “Post-war Literature: Literary Memoirs” (Posleratna književnost: literarna sećanja). Arriving in 1919, he recalls the legacy of war: “Belgrade, full of holes and ruins and weeds, sensational political events, the return of writers from all corners of the world, uncertainty...” He later adds: “It was not yet possible to speak of any kind of literary atmosphere, public, and the like in Belgrade. It was still without water, lighting, it was wrecked and ugly...”

Although the city was largely preoccupied with the consequences of the war, Crnjanski found a small but enthusiastic collection of writers, painters and musicians, anxious to provide the city with a new beginning in art and culture who called themselves simply the Group of Artists (Grupa umetnika). They met in the kafana of the Hotel Moskva because, according to Crnjanski, it was the only place with light. They represented the cream of the avant-garde, uniting both the pre-war and post-war generations. It was here that Crnjanski met Sima Pandurović, whom he greatly admired and from whom he learned about Jovan Skerlić and Vladislav Petković–Dis. He got to know Bogdan Popović and published some of his first poems in the new series of the
Serbian Literary Herald
. He mentions the names of almost all the artists associated with Belgrade Modernism whose careers began around those tables in the Hotel Moskva such as Rastko Petrović, Ivo Andrić, Stanislav Vinaver, the essayist Branko Lazarević, and others. Belgrade was in ruins but this small group reinvigorated the art scene during its short span of activity with poetry readings, literary evenings, exhibitions, concerts, debates and polemics.

Members of the Group of Artists were behind the publication of little magazines that were a feature of literary life in those years across Europe and North America. These journals were founded with the intention of promoting one set of ideas about poetry or art, in support of one of the numerous “–isms” in fashion in those heady days. They provided an outlet for a small group to publish their poetry or articles which were then read by a slightly larger group of people who shared more or less the same views, until the group would split up in order to form new constellations in support of slightly different ideas.

The atmosphere was charged with a dynamic interest in the power of modern art. The artists wanted to shock the comfortable middle classes out of conventional approaches to culture with their antics and to see how far they could take their avant-garde experiments and eccentricities. Rastko Petrović in one of his travel articles after a trip to Africa describes a totem, symbol of a heathen religion, and compares it to the image of Christ on the cross. The piece appeared in one of those magazines,
Paths
(Putevi), of which Crnjanski was an editor during the early 1920s. The Serbian Orthodox Church was suitably horrified and threatened to excommunicate Petrović until he printed a retraction and apology.

The journals may seem from this distance to be minor by-products of the day, but they performed an invaluable function in promoting interest in the cultural life of the city and connecting it to the outside world. Some of them survived longer than others and became highly respected such as
Zenith
(Zenit) edited by Ljubomir Micić (1895–1971) from 1921 to 1926 and renowned for its excellent coverage of modern trends abroad.

The interwar period was remarkable for the way in which Serbian art and literature captured the same radical spirit found elsewhere in Europe and North America. There was also a group of poets who dedicated themselves to promoting Surrealism in Belgrade. Theorizing the experiments by the French poet André Breton and others, the
Surrealist Manifesto
appeared in Belgrade just a few months after its publication in Paris. The main local exponents were Dušan Matić (1898–1980), Marko Ristić (1902–84) and Milan Dedinac (1902–66), later joined by Oskar Davičo (1909–89). They were extremely active in all areas of literary and cultural life. Ristić and Dedinac, in addition to their poetry, were also known as publicists, writing about Surrealism rather than just practising it for themselves.

As in France, the Belgrade Surrealists were politically on the left and fellow-travellers of the Communist Party. Literary life, in particular, became fraught during the 1930s with polemical attacks from both sides of the political spectrum. Crnjanski and others expressed more right-wing views, which were to return to haunt them after the Second World War when the communists came to power and they found themselves condemned as enemies of the new regime.

The pre-war trend of the Belgrade novel also continued in the 1920s and 1930s in works by, among others, Rastko Petrović, Branimir Ćosić and Stevan Jakovljević. These reflect the consequences of rapid urban and commercial development leaving people caught between two cultures, two worlds of tradition and modernity. Much of the action in them is determined by the clash of patriarchal values and the new demands of the urban environment. Characteristic themes continued to highlight the breakdown of family life and the damage caused by excessive greed and materialist values.

The story of Branimir Ćosić’s
The Two Empires
(Dva carstva, 1928) is quite typical. The main character is the son of a secondary-school teacher whose ambition is to make a name for himself and enter Belgrade’s high society. His actions are conditioned by the way in which he lives in the city and what it expects of him. Beginning a love affair with a married woman, he hopes to further his aims through her social connections. At the same time, he befriends his lover’s husband and is then caught between desire for her and a sense of moral obligation arising from his friendship with her spouse. The solution is found only when the three of them are staying away from Belgrade’s corrosive influence in a monastery. The hero is helped by one of the monks to confront his conscience and he returns cleansed of the corruption of the city.

These kinds of stories gradually became predictable as a literary form, increasingly relying on sentimental and stereotypical characters and situations. By the advent of Second World War they were often wooden constructs, lacking the ability to shock their readership and capture the essence of a new social and cultural experience.

Literary and cultural life in Belgrade from 1900 to 1940 was a lively affair reflecting the city’s growth in the modern world. Belgrade was witness to new forms of expression for the new urban experience in theatre, music, film and literature, with trends and styles reflecting contemporary tastes abroad. Citizens of Belgrade could travel around Europe or North America and feel equally as if in their own home. The city’s institutional infrastructure and the ability of its artists to experiment with form and to develop their own poetic and prose traditions identified Belgrade as one of the new cultural centres on the old continent. Belgrade was learning to tell its own story, a narrative about a city and its citizens facing the challenges of the modern world after a somewhat shaky beginning. It was a society growing in self-confidence, adopting ideas from others and supporting its own indigenous artistic flair.

Prince Paul tried to keep Yugoslavia out of the Second World War for as long as possible. He never expected to become regent and felt it proper that such momentous decisions as war or peace should be taken by Alexander’s legitimate heir, Peter, who would become of age late in 1941. But he could not keep the threat at bay for ever. Italy had significant interests in Yugoslavia and south-eastern Europe generally. It had been awarded territory after the First World War in Dalmatia and the Istrian Peninsula, home to large numbers of Croats. Albania became an Italian client state.

With an eye to expanding his influence in the region, Mussolini invaded Greece in 1941. The campaign did not go as well as hoped and he turned to Hitler for help. The quickest route for German troops to support the Italians in Greece was to cross Yugoslavia and immediate overtures were sent to Paul to allow the army’s passage. Prevarication was no longer an option, but the prince faced a difficult choice. He had strong Anglophile leanings, but could not expect help from Britain at the time. There was little popular support for an alliance with Germany. Serbia in particular maintained its traditional support for France, which was now a defeated country in the war. On a personal level, his wife was herself from the Greek royal family. Yet if he refused to cooperate with Hitler, he would place Yugoslavia in danger. In the end, he was forced to sign a pact with the Axis Powers in Vienna on 25 March 1941.

Reaction in Belgrade was swift and Paul was ousted in a coup led by General Dušan Simović supported by the army during the night of 26/27 March. Large numbers of demonstrators took to the streets chanting
Bolje rat nego pakt
(better war than the pact) and
Bolje grob nego rob
(better the grave than a slave).

In his play
Prince Paul
(Knez Pavle, 1991), Slobodan Selenić focuses on the dilemma faced by the regent, particularly his personal predicament, and even goes so far to suggest that Britain may have had a hand in persuading the army to act. There is, however, no historical evidence to support the claim. Winston Churchill welcomed the events in Belgrade, announcing,

Early this morning the Yugoslav nation found its soul. A revolution has taken place in Belgrade, and the Ministers who but yesterday signed away the honour and freedom of the country are reported to be under arrest. This patriotic movement arises from the wrath of a valiant and warlike race at the betrayal of their country by the weakness of their rulers and the foul intrigues of the Axis powers.

Alexander’s son, Peter, was declared to be of age, six months short of his eighteenth birthday, and Prince Paul went into exile in Kenya. Hitler was enraged and vowed to bring ruin to Yugoslavia. The German air force bombed Belgrade on 6 April, a land invasion followed, and final victory came quickly when Yugoslavia surrendered on 17 April. The bombing campaign was as vicious as it was unexpected. Miodrag Pavlović’s poem “Belgrade 1941” (Beograd 1941, 1977) expresses the outrage, horror and fear instilled by the brutality of the attack on the city:

With a torch between its legs
a foul insect flies around
setting fire to houses
       skins
   cemeteries
books turn to bubbles
birds ask themselves
if people are cold
to light all those fires
the town quickly gathers
its own ruins
trees clutch at their heads
who’s this who dares
take the apocalypse
into his own hands?

Peter and his ministers fled the country and eventually formed a government-in–exile in London. The country was immediately dismembered with Germany, Italy and their allies, Hungary and Bulgaria, each taking a share of its territory. Croatia became an independent state under the Ustaše led by Ante Pavelić, who conducted a brutal campaign of terror and liquidation against Serbs, Jews and gypsies. Serbia was reduced to its borders from before the Balkan Wars, with a quisling government under General Milan Nedić although real authority was with the occupying German forces. Belgrade became a frontier town once more, looking out at Zemun, now in the independent state of Croatia, and Vojvodina as part of Hungary.

The Belgrade-born film director, Dušan Makavejev, known in the West for, among others, his film
W. R.: Mysteries of the Organism
(W.R.Misterije organizma, 1971), was a boy when the war began. He recalls the bombing and later occupation of the city: