"Diary of Great War" published in Serbian

"Diary of Great War" published in Serbian

BELGRADE -- Samizdat B92 has published a new book by Gordana Ilić Marković, "A Diary of the Great War" ("Dnevnik Velikog Rata").

The concept of Gordana Ilić Marković to present literary and newspaper articles, diary entries and poems, diplomatic correspondence and wartime memories proved to be successful, Dr. Vesna Matović of the Institute for Literature and Art wrote about the book, and added:

A dense network of testimonies from the battlefield and away from the front lines (in occupied Belgrade, Šabac, Thessaloniki, Corfu, Bizerte, Paris, Austro-Hungarian concentration camps) has been created. The author has not given primary role to literary texts, nor was she of the opinion that documentary texts should be only a context for better understanding of literature. Considering that all texts are equally relevant, she avoided the division between the center and the periphery, and enabled texts to face each other, intersect, coincide or conflict. In a mosaic constellation established in this way, poetic texts did not lose in value, while documentary, artistic and publicist ones were seen in a new light.

The presence of other, rival views and sources proved to be particularly important in that segment of ​​the war that took place behind the front lines, where instead of armies, national and cultural identities clashed. This was the "culture war" space at the center of which was the Serbian language and the Cyrillic script, Matović noted in her review.

"This is in many ways a lucky, to the point response to the anniversary, the need of the culture of memory not to forget famous events of the past, to symbolically (in the form of the written word) build, or rebuild, or visit...