The “Nation of Poetry”: Language, Festival and Subversion in Macedonia

Abstract

This article critically examines the Struga Poetry Festival established in 1961 when it placed Macedonian poets and writers on the wider map of world poetry, international literature and language. With this the festival carried a subversive and an emancipatory task that not only promoted Macedonia's national poetry but also pushed the nation itself onto the world stage. Although highly politicized (and deeply political), the festival emerged as a seemingly apolitical event that celebrated the “universal language of poetry”. Yet, with its aesthetic form of an open event devoted to poetry, this festival (in a very Bakhtinian manner) pinpoints the obvious carnivalesque element in manoeuvring and subverting established social and political hierarchies. Initially, it allowed Macedonian language and poets to join established national states that have “undisputed” (or less disputed) literary traditions. The subversive nature of this festival after the 2001 military conflict in Macedonia changed the direction and intensity of the Albanian struggle for improving their status into the Macedonian society. This event has effectively allowed a minority group to initiate social movement and engage in serious identity politics related to territorial self-governance, language and cultural representation.

Keywords:

• Poetry
• Festival
• Nation-Building
• Macedonia

Notes

When I use the name Macedonia, I refer to the Republic of Macedonia which, due to the conflict with Greece, in official correspondence has also been addressed with Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia.

The nineteenth-century national revival in the Balkans launched intellectuals and artists who could not easily claim one exclusive national identity or identify with one nation-state only. The complicated history of nineteenth-century Balkan nation-states and their territories, if read through the political activism and artistic achievements of figures such as Grigor Prlicev, Rajko Zinzifov, Gjorgji Pulevski and the two Miladinovi bothers, reveals that it would be impossible to delineate a clear chain of nation-building events. What it does show, however, is the way in which contemporary Balkan nation-states have appropriated and celebrated these figures as “national” (e.g. Republic of Macedonia, Bulgaria or Greece).

In a recorded conversation between Lazar Kolisevski and Venko Markovski (the exiled poet who challenged Yugoslav socialism and Macedonia's place in Yugoslavia), the first president of Macedonia asks Markovski to give up his tough views and assume the role of a state poet. He would then immediately get a car and a chauffeur, and all the other privileges that went with the role (Srbinovski 1999).

The three central principles decided by the Committee were as follws: (1) The standard Macedonian language will consist of the central speeches that will connect all speeches to its fullest and will be easily acceptable for the people of all territories of Macedonia. (2) The standard Macedonian language will reflect its native foundations to the largest extent possible. The standard language's glossary will be enriched with words from all dialects, while new words will be created with living suffixes and when necessary, foreign pronouns will be adopted. (3) The Macedonian alphabet will consist of as many letters as there are sounds in the standard language. The orthography will be designed in accordance with the phonetic principle. (Koneski 1982, 56).

The official website of the festival similarly highlights the resilience of the festival over years in the face of the many obstacles encountered since its foundation in 1961 and especially in the past twenty years: “Despite the tremendous difficulties and harsh realities that the festival has had to live with—the fall of Yugoslavia, the war in Bosnia, the Kosovo crisis, the political and ethnic clashes in Macedonia, the terrorist crisis after 11th September attacks, a number of political and economic embargoes imposed on the region, the festival managed to go on and is currently the oldest festival in the world held in continuation for 45 years. It has successfully flourished and is now one of the most important poetry events in the modern world. And that is a tribute to world poetry and the poets” (Quoted from the Festival's website, struskiveceri.com.mk, accessed on May 2, 2007).

Among the most prominent poets who participated in the Struga festival and who were awarded the Golden Wreath are W. H. Auden, Joseph Brodsky, Allen Ginsberg, Bulat Okudzhava, Pablo Neruda, Eugenio Montale, Léopold Sédar Senghor, Artur Lundkvist, Hans Magnus Enzensberger, Ted Hughes, Makoto Ooka, Miroslav Krleža, Yehuda Amichai, Seamus Heaney and Mahmud Darwish, along with domestic authors such as Blaže Koneski.

While attempting to report on the border village of Tanuševci in February 2001, a television crew from Skopje encountered a group of armed men who guarded the border but who were not part of the regular border patrol or the Macedonian army. These armed men held the TV crew hostage for 3 h. They also destroyed their footage and equipment. A reporter later described the incident in detail, causing public surprise and disbelief in Macedonia, and raising the question of who the armed men were. These speculations came to an end a month later. During demonstrations organized by students and professors from the Albanian University in Tetovo in March 2001, armed groups—members of the so-called ONA (the People's Liberation Army, formed by ethnic Albanians)—attacked the police and military forces who were trying to disperse the demonstrators. This event marked the beginning of the armed conflict in Macedonia. The armed group that had attacked the television crew in Tanuševci reappeared at the demonstrations in Tetovo, but in larger numbers and with better organization. They also voiced concrete demands, primarily for changes to the Macedonian Constitution that would lead to greater integration of ethnic Albanians into mainstream Macedonian society. From the beginning of the crisis, it became obvious that the international community—represented by Javier Solana, the chief commissioner of the EU, and Lord Robertson, the general secretary of NATO—intended to be fully involved in the conflict. But many Macedonians, along with their leaders, were disturbed by the presence of international officials, given the close ties that had developed between ethnic Albanians in Kosovo and the West after NATO “liberated” the province in 1999.

The number of ethnic Macedonians in Struga is disputed. Many people with whom I talked tried to persuade me that Macedonians outnumbered Albanians in the town of Struga, and that it was only in the surrounding villages that Albanians were more numerous. They claimed there had been manipulations of the census.