American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European Languages

Introduction to Yugoslav Literature: An Anthology of Fiction and Poetry by BrankoMikasinovich; Dragan Milivojević; Vasa D. MihailovichReview by: Mary P. CooteThe Slavic and East European Journal, Vol. 17, No. 3 (Autumn, 1973), pp. 346-347Published by: American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European LanguagesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/306524 .

Accessed: 12/06/2014 13:41

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

.

American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European Languages is collaborating with JSTOR todigitize, preserve and extend access to The Slavic and East European Journal.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 185.44.78.129 on Thu, 12 Jun 2014 13:41:07 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

346 Slavic and East European Journal

ysis of Sexual Humor (New York: Grove Press, 1968; a second volume to appear). The latter is a pioneering attempt to fill the gap left for obscene motifs (chapter "X") in the Stith Thompson motif index.

As Mrs. Carey observes, "[Les proverbes] ne constituent au demeurant qu'une partie de I'ensemble 6rotique que nous retrouvons dans tous les genres de la tradi- tion populaire russe" (p. 42). Her book suggests many productive approaches to the study of that ensemble.

James L. Rice, Russian Research Center, Harvard

Branko Mikasinovich, Dragan Milivojevid, and Vasa D. Mihailovich, eds. Intro- duction to Yugoslav Literature: An Anthology of Fiction and Poetry. New York: Twayne, 1973. xiii, 647, $8.95.

Anyone who has struggled to find readings in translation for a survey course in Cro- atian and Serbian literature will rejoice at the appearance of this book. It contains samples from the works of important Serbian, Croatian, Slovenian, and Macedonian authors since the beginnings of each modern literature. Especially valuable are the many 19th-century writings which have not been readily available in English. Al- though anthologized excerpts cannot replace entire works,: at least one can now own a portion of the Wiles translations of Njegos's Mountain Wreath and Maiuranid's Death of Smail-aga cengid, as well as other rarities. Much of Pavile Popovi6, Jugo- Slav Stories (New York: Duffield, 1921) and many 19th-century poems translated by J. Lavrin, O. Elton, E. Underwood, and others are reproduced. The book also in- cludes pieces by established younger writers taken from modern anthologies while wisely avoiding any attempt to cover the contemporary scene. The editors have supplemented the reprints extensively with their own original translations. The result is a representative, well-balanced selection including some significant writers (e.g., A. G. Matos) who have been sadly underrepresented in English translation.

The selection of individual excerpts is on the whole good and in some cases ex- tremely apt. For example, the selections from Stankovid's Tainted Blood (Sofka) and Crnjanski's Migrations epitomize these novels, while the passages selected from Marinkovid's Cyclops and Andri6's Bosnian Chronicle are highly characteristic. (Cyclops and Migrations are important novels as yet unavailable in complete English translations.) The editors have expanded the traditional anthology fare of short stories, offering, for instance, excerpts from Lazarevid's "The German Girl" and Kozarac's "Tena." A few choices can be faulted. Senoa, a very influential but vir- tually untranslated author, is represented by a poem (not his strongest form) and by a short story of suitable length but untypical of his concerns. Perhaps to avoid an ethnographic text, Vuk is not so well served as he is by the translations in Duncan Wilson's biography. And the selection from Andri6's Bridge on the Drina is the one scene I have never been able to face a second time-the impaling of Radovan (a choice not unfair to Andri6 but simply hard on the reader). Since the book is aimed at the general reader, the editors might have provided more specific background infor- mation for the separate texts. One misses the helpful notes which accompanied the original translations of Obradovi6's Life and Adventures and the extremely allusive passages from Njegos's Mountain Wreath. There are also a number of unhelpful notes; for example, the one on Sofka's costume (p. 165) identifies ?alvari as "loose trousers worn by both men and women in India and Southeast Asia"-but why by Sofka? The contexts of certain passages need more discussion in order to make sense

This content downloaded from 185.44.78.129 on Thu, 12 Jun 2014 13:41:07 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Reviews 347

of them. Sofka again provides an example: information regarding the marriage cus- toms of her time and place is necessary to understand the drama in the excerpt. I also regret the editors' decision not to cite the source of each selection, as readers who want the complete works and further translations may not have access to the Bibliog- raphy of Yugoslav Literature in English Translation by Mateji6 and Mihailovich, to which they are referred.

The introductions to the volume's four sections periodize and characterize the respective national literatures. Generally they are factual and informative, although they do not go beyond standard handbook statements in their critical evaluations. Certain enthusiastic generalizations should be accepted cautiously; for instance, of Vuk we read, "With his peasant genius he created an entirely new alphabet by follow- ing his own slogan 'write as you speak.' " The authors within national sections are introduced with information about their biography, principal works, style, and place in their literary tradition.

The book is riddled with misprints, of which a partial list has been sent to the publisher. In fact, it suffers in general from poor editing in both the introductory material and translated texts. There are a number of misleading lapses in English usage (e.g., "crafty" for skillful, "behind the borders" for outside the borders) and awkward renderings, especially of titles. Despite such faults, the anthology is a good one. It provides a useful general view of the literary history of the peoples of Yugo- slavia, while the price makes it a reasonable textbook or introductory survey for nonspecialists and friends of Yugoslav culture.

Mary P. Coote, University of California, Berkeley

Janina W. Hoskins. Early and Rare Polonica of the 15th-17th Centuries in American Libraries: A Bibliographical Survey. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1973. xi, 193, $19.50 in U.S., $21.45 elsewhere.

The work comprises 1,231 entries representing books and pamphlets printed within the boundaries of the Polish Commonwealth from the 15th until the end of the 17th century. It also includes titles printed outside Poland "but relating to that area." One should not look in this compilation for the works of, say, Nicholas Copernicus (to use only one striking example), because the author makes it clear that "works of Polish scholars and writers printed outside the boundaries of the Polish Common- wealth and bearing no relation to its lands are omitted." Not surprisingly, entries in Latin predominate, and entries in Polish, according to the Introduction, amount to about 10 percent of the total. Other languages represented include French, German, Italian, English, Hebrew, Dutch, Czech, and languages using the cyrillic alphabet.

The following method, described in the Introduction, was used in preparing the book. A list of relevant titles was drawn from Karol and Stanislaw Estreicher, Biblio- grafia polska and similar works which are listed at the end of the present volume. The list was then checked against the National Union Catalog, the Cyrillic Union Catalog, the National Union Catalog of Hebraica, and "other card and printed catalogs at the Library of Congress and elsewhere." The entries are arranged alphabetically, and many of them are annotated.

One should bear in mind that the list omits some titles present in American li- braries and never reported to the union catalogs utilized. By the author's own admis- sion, "This compilation is not a complete census of American holdings, since only limited information is available on U.S. holdings of books originating in Poland and

This content downloaded from 185.44.78.129 on Thu, 12 Jun 2014 13:41:07 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions