Sava Jankovic. Proticevi

World Literature Today, Sept-Oct, 2006 by Mira N. Mataric

Sava Jankovic. Proticevi. Sremski Karlovci, Serbia. Kairos. 2005. 300 pages. ISBN 86-7128-082-9

PROTICEVI (The Protiches) is the story about a wealthy family in the province of Srem, Serbia, between the two World Wars. The despotic paterfamilias Slavko Protich is harsh with his wife, even as he has a liaison on his "business trip." He does not show warmth toward his four children either, but the oldest, Mila, is his favorite. The most beautiful girl in town, with no life experience but a rich imagination, she falls in love, at first sight, with a clown from a visiting circus. She elopes with him. They spend a night walking and talking only, yet her father publicly denounces her as his daughter. Mila and Stevan get married right away in a nearby monastery, and her life turns into hardship and poverty. "Love is not sufficient for a happy marriage," she concludes. She has lost everything else: her social position, good life, and even the right to see her family.

The novel is deliberately educational, written in the third, "omniscient" person, mostly in dialogues. Employing parallels and contrasts (like Tolstoy), Sava Jankovic conveys his views on idealism versus opportunism (Mila and her father), communism-atheism versus national and Serbian Orthodox tradition (twin brothers, Mirko and Mladen). Seeing himself as a neorealist and a Christian-realist, Jankovich points to love as the best solution. War and peace, politics and religion are the focal issues. Love is the bridge connecting individuals in marriage, friendship, teamwork, and any relationship. While Jankovic is treating the same topics as his favorite Russian authors, employing similar methods, his themes stem from the twentieth century with an outlook from the twenty-first. He reinforces those values that he cherishes as eternal.

Proticevi depicts peaceful times, the German invasion of Serbia, and the liberation. The world is filled with turmoil, violence, and suffering. Through strife and adversity, individuals and nations search for identity and the meaning of existence. As a result, most of the characters in the book are changed at the end: Slavko Protich's heart softens toward the family, the twins reach the maturity necessary to find their path and goal. Through a single family, the author strives to depict the Serbian bourgeoisie. Although clashing in their ideological beliefs, the twins do not take that as an excuse for bloodshed (a biblical theme abundantly found in the newer Serbian political history). For Jankovic such war is not "civil" but self-destructive, suicidal. Labeled as "a writer with no hate," Jankovic believes in love stronger than anything else, breeding unity, loyalty, humanness, and brotherhood. This is, obviously, the author's solution for individual, national, and international conflicts.

An urban, family novel like Proticevi is a welcome addition to contemporary Serbian literature, because this genre was absent from Serbian literature for decades, specifically from the bourgeois point of view, and especially during the times of the sociopolitical changes drastically affecting its existence and social circumstances.

It is Jankovic's intention to convey his view of the dramatic strife and conflict in his native Serbia not only with the German invader but also with the domestic opponents who won the political battle. Like his role model Dostoevsky, he, too, looked death in the eye. Miraculously saved from the mass grave to tell the story (like Coleridge's Ancient Mariner), he is eagerly offering a message of love and forgiveness as the only way for human survival. In an age of sophisticated weaponry, hate and revenge are the most incendiary triggers.

Mira N. Mataric

Pasadena, California