TEARS OF THE PRODIGAL DAUGHTER: Homoeroticism in Leposava Mijukovis

Prose
arka Svirev
PhD student, Faculty of Philology, University of Belgrade

Eros, again now, the loosener of limbs troubles me,

Bittersweet, sly, uncontrollable creature.
Sappho1

In the context of the poetic paradigm of Serbian literature in the first decade of the 20 th
century, it would be expected that Leposava Mijukovis2 homoerotic prose provoked a kind of
reception shock for readers and primarily critics. In the period between 1905 and 1910, she
published four stories in Srpski knjievni glasnik [The Serbian Literary Gazette], which was the
literary institution par excellence at that time. In that journal, the major authority of critical
thought, Jovan Skerli (1887-1914) marked her work as one of the most important literary
phenomenon. Her work after 1910 was covered by several decades of oblivion; a fact that
imposes the question of the motives for this "silence". This is even more surprising because
Jovan Skerlis criticism, both positive and negative, was a seminal reference in all the later
research of literary history. Did Skerli, perhaps, overestimate Leposava Mijukovis narrative

I express my deep gratitude to Dr. Svetlana Tomi, professor at Alfa University, Belgrade, Dr. Lilien F.
Robinson, professor at George Washington University, Washington D.C., and Dr. Ljubica D. Popovich,
professor emeritus at Vanderbilt University, Nashville, for their helpful comments, suggestions and
support during my work on this study.

1 Sappho, Fragments, on Love and Desire (VII), Selected Poems and Fragments, translated
by A. S. Kline, available at http://www.poetryintranslation.PITBR/Greek/Sappho.htm.

2 Little is known about Leposava Mijukovis life. Born in Jagodina in 1882, she was educated in the Girls
College in Belgrade. In the period 1901-1904 she studied at Zurich University, but it is not known exactly what. She
worked as a teacher for a short time. Mijukovi was a socialist and one of the few highly educated women of that
time. She was an associate of several women's magazines. She died under mysterious circumstances in 1910. During
her lifetime, Mijukovi published only four stories in Srpski knjievni glasnik [Serbian Literary Gazette]: Utisci
ivota [Impressions of Life], Blizu smrti [Near to Death], Bolna ljubav [Painful Love] and Pria o dui sa veitom
enjom [The Story About the Eternal Longing Soul] in 1906 and 1907. In 1910 she published two lyrics, Zemlji To
Earth i Misli Thoughts. All papers published during her lifetime were signed only by initials L. M. At the end of
the 20th century, 1996, her stories are published in a book for the first time. Leposava Mijukovis biography is
taken from database Knjienstvo Theory and History of Women's Writing in Serbian until 1915. The article is
available at http://knjizenstvo.etf.bg.ac.rs/en/authors/leposava-mijuskovic. I extend my thanks to Jelena Milinkovi,
the author of Leposava Mijukovis biography and bibliography at aforementioned site, for her assistance in
solving the perplexity I had about Mijukovis biography.

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gift, or a "gauntlet thrown" to the researchers was not socially accepted until our time? Leposava
Mijukovis prose is still a challenge for researchers. On one hand, it opens the chapters of
Serbian literature which have so far not found its researches and have been only partially
illuminated. On the other hand, it suggests the need for a re-conceptualization of Serbian
literature courses and a new perspective on the literary tradition.
The aim of this paper is to shed light on the aspects of her work which are not interpreted
or interpreted insufficiently so far. What I have in mind is homoeroticism, its position in the
narrative network, and ideological outcomes that it implies. The examination of homoeroticism
in Leposava Mijukovis prose suggests a different contextualization of her work within the
Serbian prose tradition.
Leposava Mijukovis prose corresponds to the birth of modern Serbian prose. In fact, it
is she who has been identified as the one who started it. Jovan Skerli pointed out that njena
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proza predstavlja moda novi literarni pravac. Decades later, Dragia Vitoevi (1939-1987)
placed her, next to Veljko Milievi (1888-1929), as an innovator and one of the first modernist
in Serbian literature,4 nothing that in her prose everything is new: the themes, the narrative
technique and the style.5 Slavica Garonja Radovanac (1957), in her study dedicated to
Mijukovis prose, also puts the author among the initiators of Serbian Modernism, because of
inovativnosti tematike i likova (slobodna ljubav, pobunjena ena, homoerotika, autodestrukcija,
suicid, ludilo, likovi intelektualaca), kao i knjievnog postupka (automatsko pisanje, fragment,
podsvest).6

3her prose may represent a new direction in literature: Jovan Skerli, Srpska knjievnost 1906 in
Pisci i knjige IV (Belgrade: Prosveta, 1964), 298.

4 u sklopu onovremene srpske proze i njenog evropeiziranja, Leposava Mijukovi i mladi Veljko
Milievi () prvi su i glavni novatori i modernisti.: Dragia Vitoevi, Srpski knjievni glasnik 1901-
1914 (Novi Sad and Belgrade: Matica srpska - Institut za knjievnost, 1990), 272.

5 Druga pria, Blizu smrti, bila je takoe sasvim nova: i temom, i pripovedakim postupkom, i stilom.:
Dragia Vitoevi, Srpski knjievni glasnik, 270.

6 "innovativeness of themes and characters (free love, rebellious woman, homoeroticism, self-
destruction, suicide, insanity, characters of intellectual), as well as literary technique (automatic writing,
fragment, subconsciousness)": Slavica Garonja Radovanac, Leposava Mijukovi zaetnica srpske
moderne in ena u srpskoj knjievnosti, (Novi Sad: Dnevnik, 2010), 67.

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 Leposava Mijukovis prose indeed represented a novelty in every sense. Even novelty
to the extent that some of its aspects remain not perceived enough in terms of their interpretation.
Leposava Mijukovi simultaneously initiates the queer identity in the Serbian literature, and
processes it in a way that becomes communicative only to future readers. Hence, perhaps, the
absence of reception shock, and the "silence" which enveloped her work in the ensuing decades.
The erotic in her fiction gets outflanked by understanding of the motives related to Serbian
Modernism. Therefore, the true nature of her female rebellious characters stays unperceived in its
ultimate consequences. However, the erotic, articulated in a non-heterosexual matrix, is
essentially the node of her first two published works of fiction. It is provocative enough to be an
impetus for the re-interpretation of Mijukovis prose in the context of the Serbian Modern
literary tradition. The stories Utisci ivota [Impressions of Life] (1905) and Blizu smrti [Near to
Death] (1906), which form a single narrative unit, are the confessional-diary dramatization of
"gender trouble" as defined by Judith Butler,7 and a literary treatment of homoeroticism and
gender identity behind the articulation of the gynomorphic Otherness that is rarely encountered
in Serbian literature.
The mapping of the erotic in Leposava Mijukovis prose ranged from complete
suppression to a precise name giving. The reception of her prose can also serve as a contribution
to the cultural history and the testimony of the treatment of gender Otherness. Jovan Skerli did
not speak specifically about the eroticism in Mijukovis prose. However, in writing about the
common features of the works of writers of her generation, he emphasized that, what connects
them, is the will to live with broader perspectives and sa vie cvetanja cele ljudske prirode8 and

7 Judith Butler rejects naturalized, essentialist gender identities, and the illusion of a primary and internal
gender-specific self. She considers gender as a performative act, contingent constructed meanings. The
effect of gender implies that the performance is repeated, that it repeats the meanings which already
socially established, and those who do not form their gender properly are punished. She elaborates the
idea of gender identity in the first chapter of Gender Trouble: Gender is the repeated stylization of the
body, a set of repeated acts within a highly rigid regulatory frame that congeal over time to produce the
appearance of substance, of a natural sort of being. A political genealogy of gender ontologies, if it is
successful, will deconstruct the substantive appearance of gender into constitutive acts and locate and
account for those acts within the compulsory frames set by the various forces that police the social
appearance of gender. Judith Butler, Gender trouble: feminism and the subversion of identity (New York:
Routledge, 1990), 33.

8 "more flourishing of the whole human nature": Jovan Skerli, Mlada srpska poezija i proza in Pisci i
knjige IV (Belgrade: Prosveta, 1964), 328.

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that they have senzualnosti, koja moe buniti etrdesetogodinje device i one koji dre da se
knjige piu za pansionate mladih devojaka.9 Among the most interesting young prose writers
Skerli included Leposava Mijukovi. Although one cannot overlook the potential of Skerlis
far-reaching insight, what seems to be at work here is the so-called "gender neutralization". By
emphasizing the poetic features that correspond to the dominant (male) course, Skerli ignores
specific meanings determined by specific gender identity. Dragia Vitoevi names potpuno
novu temu10 brought by Mijukovis prose as odnos dveju ena, strasno prijateljstvo,11 noting
that moda ni do danas taj odnos jedne ene prema drugoj u nas nije dat tako duboko i tako
moderno, gotovo sudbinski.12 Impelling the dilemma whether to understand this qualifier as a
deciding one in regard to the intensity or predestination, it is undeniable that Vitoevi sensed the
nature of the passionate friendship, but he did not use its real name to identify it. In ivorad
orevis study, the afterword to the first collection of Mijukovis prose and poetry, points
out ova proza govori o ljubavi na za ono vreme, pomalo zbunjujui nain 13 and premreena je
finom, vazduastom pauinom enske, skoro erotske nenosti.14 It remains unfathomable to me
what the phrase "airy cobweb of female tenderness" means; whether it alludes to the instability
of women's eroticism or to the subtlety in expressing the same. In both cases, I dont find the

9 "sensuality, which can upset forty year-old virgins and those who deem that the books are written for
the pensions for young girls": Jovan Skerli, Mlada srpska poezija i proza, 328.

10 "brand new theme": Dragia Vitoevi, Srpski knjievni glasnik, 270.

11 "the relationship between the two women, a passionate friendship": Dragia Vitoevi, Srpski
knjievni glasnik, 270.

12 "perhaps such a relationship has not been depicted in such a deep and modern, almost fateful way":
Dragia Vitoevi, Srpski knjievni glasnik, 270.

13 "this prose speaks about love in a bit confusing manner for that time": ivorad orevi Leposava
Mijukovi, junakinja naeg doba in Leposava Mijukovi, Utisci ivota, ed. by ivorad orevi,
Dobrica Milievi, (Beograd: Radnika tampa 1996), 86.

14 it is crisscrossed by fine, airy cobwebs of female, almost erotic tenderness": ivorad orevi
Leposava Mijukovi, 87.

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support for this statement in Mijukovis prose. Finally, in a recent work devoted to the author,
her eroticism is explicitly labeled as homoeroticism, and more precisely lesbian homoeroticism.15
Utisci ivota [Impressions of life] and Blizu smrti [Near to the death] are complementary
on many levels - thematic, stylistic, genres, conceptual. These stories thematize disharmonious
experience of the selfhood of the anxious narrative "I". The thematic core is also a desire for a
free life, which is being hampered by the conservative environment. The confrontation with
(repressive) social values and patriarchal views on the world is the thematic topos. In both stories
the author reaches for the intimate genre of confession. According to genre choice, the narrative
perspective becomes subjective and the narration moves to the topography of the narrators inner
world. The stories are additionally intriguing since the narrator is female. As a result, a female
subjectivity was discovered in Serbian literature. The predecessors of Leposava Mijukovi also
debated the social norms which disqualify women. However, in Leposava Mijukovis prose the
rebellious attitude is devoid of collective and social dimensions of engagement. The drama of
insurrection takes place on a chamber stage. The problem of gender is primarily seen as an
existential problem. Most strikingly, the issue of gender was developed in correlation with Eros.
Eros in Mijukovis prose is a source of frustration, fear and agony. However, the detection of
ambivalence of Eros and the refusal to deny it further complicates the semantic layer of
Mijukovis prose. The sequence of sharpened and ambiguous categories, and their counterpoint
affluence, conducts the rhythm of her prose.
The story Impressions of Life is an intimate confession of a disappointed and unfulfilled
young woman. The narrative structure is suggested by the title. The girl's confession is
articulated in fragments, and the impressions are linked by means of association. The time
passed, a time of joy, and the present time, a time of grief, are opposed through clips of
confession that have filmic quality. Although the author has signed the "generic pact", 16 that
filled the horizon of expectations of the public, it is used for the articulation of the content that
goes beyond that horizon.
15 See, Slavica Garonja Radovanac Leposava Mijukovi, 67; Jelena Milinkovi, Ljubav kao performativni in
u pripovetkama Leposave Mijukovi, Knjienstvo, asopis za studije knjievnosti, roda i kulture, Vol. 1 (2011),
http://www.knjizenstvo.rs/magazine.php?text=11 .

16 Term generic pact is used by Magdalena Koch to describe the test of Serbian female modernist writers in the
intimate genres (confession, letter, diary). Women writers of the early 20th century were adjusted to the genre
awareness of epoch because in this way they could legitimize their work on the literary scene. But, they used
conventional form to express subversive contents. See Magdalena Koh kad sazremo kao kultura Stvaralatvo
srpskih spisateljica na poetku XX veka (Belgrade: Slubeni glasnik, 2012).

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 The thematic backbone of Utisci ivota [Impressions of Life] is a sudden and involuntary
separation from a loved one. A bisection of the being conditioned by that separation leads to the
suicide attempt of the narrator. The author proceeds from the genre of love story, a low ranked
genre in the traditional hierarchy to her own version of it. Love story is perceived as a typical
female genre, trivial and easy. But, the constellation in this love triangle is not set in a traditional
way. It is about two women and a man, but the drama of rupture and disillusionment is further
compounded because the "friend" who leaves the intimate world of narrator is her girlfriend. So,
the woman left a woman for another man. Leposava Mijukovi used the conventional scheme of
love story as a template for the illumination of homoerotic relationship. Homoerotic relationship
is the node of the narrative texture that involves existential problems of self-delusion and
alienation. The life with a girlfriend in the past is presented in images that are abundant in
metaphors of stars and the universe. The life after separation has been reduced to the metaphors
of mud.
The true nature of their relationship the narrator encrypts by using the typical technique
of masking sexuality in the so-called neo-classical form Greek love.17 Thus she reduces the
erotic charge, and favors the intellectual nature of the relationship, as a relationship in which
there was nothing so ordinary. She sees her friend sa izrazom arka oduevljena za sve lepo i
uzvieno.18 As the narrative unfolds the erotic charge that imbues their friendship is revealed. In
addition to its masking in the Greek ideal of love, a kind of alibi for homoeroticism can be
recognized in the intertextual dialogue with Christianity. The narrators experience of love is
based on purity and selfless giving. Love elevates and ennobles a man, makes him better. A man
without love is empty. The narrators reflections correspond to Apostle Pauls words on love
from The First Epistle to the Corinthians. However, references to Christianity in the story Utisci
ivota [Impressions of Life] are not only worn in the concept of love. Christianity is a vertical of
values against which identity in traditional culture is a scale. It is a kind of metonymic projection

17 The tehnique that will be, for example, used by Rastko Petrovic in his African itineraries. This is also
suggested by Slavica Garonja Radovanac, who marks the parting of the two women as "Sapphian
tragedy." To be more precise, Garonja Radovanac by this phrase marked the separation of Leposava
Mijukovi and her friend Milica Raki that, according to this author, served as a documentary weft for
the story Utisci ivota. S. Garonja Radovanac, Leposava Mijukovi, 74.

18 "with an expression of fervent enthusiasm for everything beautiful and sublime": Leposava
Mijukovi, Utisci ivota, in Prie o dui, ed. by ivorad orevi and dobrica Milievi (Belgrade:
Radnika tampa, 1996), 18.

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of patriarchy. The author explicitly expresses her own rebellion through the narrators polemic
with the convention of marriage, the imperative of childbirth, and the imperative opposition
spiritual/physical, which is a substantial Christian norm.
The separation is caused by the knowledge that her girl friend is moj uzvieni prijatelj,
najobinija enska sa svim strastima, i lana, lana sva! 19 Namely, the narrator learns that her
friend is getting married. This news totally changes the narrators former ideals and hopes,
inflicting untold pain, and decentralizing her. The marriage is seen as a betrayal, and the
beginning of the absolute loneliness of the narrator: Sama, potpuno sama u sredini koju ne
mogu da shvatim a ni ona mene.20 The narrator confesses being aware of her gender inability to
fit in the social mainstream. The narrator will consider the marriage of her friend to be a false
one, a mimicry. In the background of marriage, the narrator sees a friend's concession to social
norms, that is the acceptance of womens prescribed roles within the social field. She herself gets
relocated outside the specified field set for the legitimate practice of identity, because she refuses
to capitulate: S kakvim pravom trai od mene ovaj ivot, ovo drutvo, da ja ivim za njega
samo? ta mi daje u naknadu za to? (...) S kakvim pravom hoe da ja satrem svoje ja, da svoje
najmilije tenje ostavim da sagore u meni samoj? 21 The narrators "dearest desires" can be
understood as a desire for deflection, for countering patriarchal coded female identity, which her
friend betrays by accepting the "social contract". Also, her questions reflect the tragic dimension
of a social outsider existence.
In the narrative fragments of an explicit rhetorical charge and pathetic intonation, the
narrators sorrow, anger and self-blame alternate. The narrators psycho-emotional state after the
separation reflects melancholy in which she sinks deeper and deeper. The melancholy is
recognized as an important factor in the formation of gender identity. In the drama of the
narrators split identity there can be recognized melancholic denial and preservation of

19 "my noble friend, is an ordinary woman with all the passions, and false, all false!": Leposava
Mijukovi, Utisci ivota, 20.

20 "Alone, all alone in the surroundings that I cannot comprehend and neither it can comprehend me:
Leposava Mijukovi, Utisci ivota, 24.

21 "By what right this life and this society require from me to live for them only? What can give me the
compensation for it? (...) What rights does it have to ask from me to annihilate myself, to leave my
dearest desires, to burn out within myself?": Leposava Mijukovi, Utisci ivota, 24.

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homosexuality in the process of gender formation in heterosexual framework. 22 The
manifestation of melancholy is one of the textual "cracks" that breaks alibae of asexual nature of
this friendship. In the light of the melancholy one can understand her efforts and attempt to
stabilize herself: I ja vidim ta mi treba raditi da ne propadnem, - da se udam! Da volim svog
mua, da raam decu, da zasnujem porodicu, da budem pokorni rob celog tog sveta te
porodice, da ... Oh! Oh! ... Stani devojko, stani malo viknula sam sama sebi glasno. Sve je to
lepo i krasno, ali se najpre treba izmiriti sa tim. 23 However, the reconciliation is impossible. The
narrator sends a "scream", the "scream" symbolizing the desire to overcome existential
narrowness. However, she stays absolutely isolated and lonely. The narrators sense of emptiness
and loneliness assumes cosmic proportions. In a delirious state, she denies the existence of God,
who ignores her prayers and suffering. Mrak napolju, mrak u dui, mrak svuda! 24 The
experience of nihilism becomes the main feature of the narrators experience of the world. Even
nowadays what the reader find surprising is the authors willingness to deprive her fictional
world of existential stronghold, whether of a sacred or profane provenance, and to highlight a
modern narrative self with incredible lucidity.

22 Compare: As a set of sanctions and taboos, the ego ideal regulates and determines masculine and
feminine identification. Because identifications substitute for object relations, and identifications are the
consequence of loss, gender identification is a kind of melancholia in which the sex of the prohibited
object is internalized as a prohibition. This prohibition sanctions and regulates discrete gendered identity
and the law of heterosexual desire.; Consider that the refusal of homosexual cathexis, desire and aim
together, a refusal both compelled by social taboo and appropriated through developmental stages, results
in a melancholic structure which effectively encloses that aim and object within the corporeal space or
crypt established through an abiding denial. If the heterosexual denial of homosexuality results in
melancholia and if melancholia operates through incorporation, then the disavowed homosexual love is
preserved through the cultivation of an oppositionally defined gender identity. Judith Butler, Gender
trouble, 63, 69.

23 "I see what I need to do in order not to perish I must get married! To love my husband, to have
children, to have a family, to be obedient slave to the world and of that family, yes Oh! Oh! ... Hold
on, girl, hold on - I shouted to myself aloud. It's all well and gorgeous, but I must first be reconciled with
it.": Leposava Mijukovi, Utisci ivota, 25. The stories Utisci ivota i Blizu smrti are extremely open
to psychoanalytic interpretations, however, their breadth surpasses the scope of this work. Jelena
Milinkovi analyses gender melancholy in the structure of characters in Leposava Mijukovis fiction,
relying on psychoanalytic interpretations. See, Jelena Milinkovi, Ljubav kao performativni in.

24 The dark outside, the dark in the soul, the dark everywhere!: Leposava Mijukovi, Utisci ivota,
27.

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 The rebellion against social norms is not only motivated by aspirations of a woman who
does not agree to the roles of wife and mother that society imposes upon her. It is motivated,
also, by the experience of someone who is unable to articulate her identity at all. The narrator is
in a position of double powerlessness: nemona da vie savlaujem protest nabujalog ivota u
sebi protiv te oite tiranije nad njim.25 She is, at the same time, unable to articulate publicly this
"thriving life", being in a collision with her own instincts and sexuality. The narrators
corporeality cannot be dovetailed in the heterosexual pattern legitimatized by the marital model.
However, in the story Utisci ivota [Impressions of Life] the narrator consistently denies her
corporeality, giving primacy to the spiritual principle. At the same time, she becomes aware that
she betrays the spiritual principle as it is understood in a traditional context. The impossibility of
gender identification within the socially codified norms takes the narrator to the uninhabitability
zone.26 Thus, death in the omnipresent darkness is, in fact, seen as the light. It is not experienced
as nothingness. On the contrary, death is the fulfillment, an epistemologically relevant
experience. The final scene is the encounter with personified death. The narrator surrenders to
the ecstatic embrace of death. Death occurs as a woman to whom the narrator attributes a saintly
beauty. Like she did to her friend long time ago. The hallucinatory vision on the existential brink
is, in fact, the psychological and emotional compensation. Leposava Mijukovi could speak
about the forbidden and taboo only through discourse of fantastic.
The story Blizu smrti [Near to Death] thematizes a recovery in the hospital after a suicide
attempt and introspective confrontation with the extreme experience and, as in the case of the
story Utisci ivota [Impressions of Life], the interpretative results gravitate around the resolution
of "gender trouble". Reflective-emotional horizon of the story oscillates between the feelings of
rejection, maladjustment, existential angst and irrational feelings of guilt. The title covers both
corporeality and psycho-emotional experience of the narrator. It can be interpreted in a literal and

25"unable to overcome the protest of thriving life in myself against the obvious tyranny over it":
Leposava Mijukovi, Utisci ivota, 24.

26 Judith Butler designated the uninhabitability zone as an area of despised beings. Despised beings are those
beings that the law does not recognize as the subject. These are the beings who are barred from the area populated
by subjects and who are denied the right to participate in politics (for example, marginalized genders). Although
they should been "invisible", they emerge as "terrifying identifications", as a condition for being to become subject
every time it questions its own personality. See, Judith Butler, Bodies that Matter. On the Discursive Limits of Sex
(New York: Routledge, 1993). The settling the score with herself in the story Utisci ivota [Impressions of Life] can
be understood as a confrontation with "terrifying identifications", which her own queer alterity at one point suggests
to the narrator.

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in a symbolic sense. Death experience in the story is symbolically rich motif and it is an
interpretive challenge for readers.
ivorad orevi separates the two dominant motifs, motiv oca kao otelotvorene
traene sigurnosti i zatite i motiv spasene due koja se inom samoubistva liava svega to ju je
u realnom, sada bivem ivotu uprljalo.27 orevi reads the story Blizu smrti [Near to Death]
as the one about ljudskoj potrebi da ivi i nadivi sve ta ivot kao prepreku isturi pred njega. 28
Slavica Garonja Radovanac, following the same idea, explains this story as jedinu prozu L.
Mijukovi sa optimistikim zavretkom, gde prevladava volja za ivotom. 29 She points out that
oseanje due da joj je samo dobro osloboenoj i van tela, van granica materijalne
egzistencije, najvanije iskustvo jedinke i poruka ove proze. 30 The end of the story can be
viewed in an optimistic key as the renewal of the narrators life force. However, the narrators
healing is not the fruit of reconciliation with the father who embodies the paradigm of social
value, as the previous interpretators of Leposava Mijukovis work suggested.
Having awakened in a hospital bed after surgery, through flashbacks the narrator goes
back to the night when a gun shot was fired from a revolver. In the hallucinatory images she
revives the reflexive-philosophical dialogue between the Soul and the Body that took place in the
"torn, disturbed being" that night. Their dialogue reveals the source of the narrators self-
destructiveness:
Ti ne sme da obmanjuje vie sebe! zapoveda mi glas Due. Gde ti je svest? ... Gde ti
je ponos svesnog oveka?
Da obmanjujem sebe! ... Da obmanjujem sebe! ponavlja sa najgorom ironijom glas Tela.
Zato da ne obmanjujem? Ko se jo ne obmanjuje? Ko sme da veruje da je sve ba onako

27 "the motive of father as the embodiment of needed protection and the motive of a saved soul, which
by the act of suicide is liberated of everything that dirtied it in a real and now former life": ivorad
orevi, Leposava Mijukovi, junakinja naeg doba, 88-89.

28 "the human need to live and experience all that life pushes in front of him or her as an obstacle":
ivorad orevi, Leposava Mijukovi, junakinja naeg doba, 88.

29 "the only Mijukovis prose with an optimistic ending, where the will to live predominates": Slavica
Garonja Radovanac, Leposava Mijukovi zaetnica srpske moderne, 83.

30 "the only time the soul feels good is when it is liberated and out of the body, outside of the bounds of material
existence, and it is born the most important experience of the individual and the morale of this prose": Slavica
Garonja Radovanac, Leposava Mijukovi zaetnica srpske moderne, 83.

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 kako se ini? ... Zar ne obmanjuje i misao i oseanje, isto tako, kao i moja ula? Ti se
mora navii da snosi pritisak neophodnoga, pritisak ivota. I svesno, i svesno ba
mora obmanjivati sebe, jer treba iveti! ... Treba iveti! ... Razume li, treba iveti! ...
A mene? Zar ti mene nije ao? Jeca glas Due.Oh ao i te je, Duo moja! Tebe mi je ao
mnogo! govorim ja plano. 31
The Soul resists the hegemony of the Body, the deception of urges, insisting on consciousness,
on the "pride of a conscious man" as cultured and disciplined. The Body responds that
everything is a deception, thought, and feeling and that the Soul has to get used to bearing "the
pressure of necessity, the pressure of life", while yelling that one should live. A cleaved being
inflicts a lethal shot to itself in order to save its soul. Death is in this place devoid of lyrical and
idealized note. It is given by a naturalistic image of the decomposing body. The impossibility of
existence is attached to the paradigm of corporeality, through which the body manifests itself as
abjection par excellence.32
In the first part of the story, the author sharply contrasts eros and ethos. Only through
ethos the existence could be transcended. The corporeality threatens and harasses, the
corporeality traditionally associated with feminine as opposed to rational and masculine. The
couple of body and feminine symbolizes evasiveness, danger, dirt. Feminine and corporeality
should be tamed, disciplined and regulated.
In a kind of astral vision of her body, the narrator's own experience of the body is shaped
in Cartesian spirit: Vidim lepo svoje Telo ... mlitavo, bespomono, isprueno u krevetu, Telo ...
tu masu ispranoga, krvavoga mesa (...) Kako je gadno! ... Kako je grozno! ...Uh! ... i stresajui se

31You must not deceive yourselves more! The voice of the Soul commands me. Where is your
consciousness? ... Where's the pride of a conscious man? (...)To deceive myself! ... To deceive myself! Repeats the
voice of the Body with the most bitter irony. Why not deceive? Who else does not deceive himself? Who dares to
believe that everything is exactly as it seems? ... Is it not true that the thought and feeling deceive as well as my
senses? You have to get used to bearing the pressure of the necessary, the pressures of life. And consciously, and
consciously deceive yourself you must, because you have to live!... One should live! ... Do you understand, one
should live!
What about me? Do you not feel sorry for me? Sobs the voice of the Soul.
- Oh, I'm sorry for you, my dear soul! I pity you so much! I say in a crying voice.": Leposava Mijukovi, Blizu
smrti in Prie o dui, ed. by ivorad orevi (Belgrade: Radnika tampa, 1996), 31.

32 The concept of abjection in the work rests on Julia Kristevas definition: It is thus not lack of cleanliness or
health that causes abjection but what disturbs identity, system, order. What does not respect borders, positions, rules.
The in-between, the ambiguous, the composite. See, Julia Kristeva, Powers of Horror. An Essay on Abjection (New
York: Columbia University Press, 1982), 4.

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sa odvratnou, htela bih da ga ne gledam vie.... 33 The body is a source of anxiety, it
destabilizes, endangers the order and coherence. The body becomes a projection screen of the
narrators traumatic confrontation with her own sexuality. The abject is perverse because it
neither gives up nor assumes a prohibition, a rule, or a law; but turns them aside, misleads,
corrupts; uses them, takes advantage of them, the better to deny them. 34 The narrator sees her
own body as something that radically undermines something that otherwise should be a stable
and unequivocal order of the economy of desire. Thus, corporeality, desire and sexuality that
were incompatible with a well-established system of heterosexual values led to ultimate
frontiers. The narrator, smitten under the burden of abjection, denies her being.
The abundance of modernity that Leposava Mijukovis prose contains is also revealed
in correspondence with the "fascination with the abjection" that is inherent to modern literature.
Julia Kristeva notes that modern literature originated from the untenable aspects of perverse or
superego positions.35 That is the literature that denies religion, morality and points directly at
their violence and absurd. The modern literature, moreover, goes beyond the opposition of the
categories pure/impure, prohibition/sin and morality/immorality, and surpasses them. 36 In the end
of Mijukovis narration, the introduced contrast between the soul and the body is not dismissed
in a way that implies the narrators suicide attempt.
The dichotomies soul/body, clean/dirty, and the imperative of salvation of the soul,
invoke Christian heritage into their habitat. The phenomenon of abjection reveals itself in the act
of negation of corporeality and imposes its cogitation through the lens of the Christian concept of
sin. The equating of the body and dirt in the section afore cited is equivalent to the
evangelization process of internalization of sin. The abjection is not something that will
jeopardize the being from the outside, something that can be implemented into the body as in the
Old Testament, but the being itself that becomes its original, a threatening alterity,37 expressed
through an improper act. The body becomes one of the epicenters of the New Testaments
33 "I can see my body clearly ... limp, helpless, protruding in bed, the Body ... the mass of washed out,
bloody meat (...) How awful! ... How gruesome! Yuck ...! ... and shaking with disgust, I would like not to
look at it any more ....": Leposava Mijukovi, Blizu smrti, 33.

34 Julia Kristeva, Powers of Horror, 15.

35 Ibid.,16.

36 Ibid.

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hamartiology, and it equaled with the drive, related to greed and lust those various
descriptions of sin converge on the flesh or rather on what might be called, by anticipation, an
overwhelming release of drives, unrestrained by the symbolic.38 The narrators rift is just started
by the knowledge that instinctive nature is incompatible, incompatible with the paradigmatic
matrix. In order to be purified from her sins, it is necessary to recognize and verbalize her own
abjection, because sin is redeemed by the Word. For Christianity the speech and confession are
condition sine qua non for purification from abjection and atonement i.e. forgiveness. Thus, it is
critical when the narrators speech stops.
Examining the confession mode in Leposava Mijukovis stories, Jelena Milinkovi,
draws on Foucault and views the autobiographical narrative as one of the key successors of
Christian confession, specificum of Western civilization, a means for establishing the truth within
scientia sexualis as opposite of ars sexualis. Milinkovi points out that the confession can be
interpreted in two ways in the liberating and restricted sense. From the formal standpoint, the
confession is liberating because it allows the formation and expression of the heroes internal
contents. From the positions of the heroes motivation to confess, the confession is a negative
phenomenon. The heroes are forced to confess in order to explain the exceeds of the norm.
However, confession does not bring them any relief or forgiveness. On the contrary, confession
takes them to the madness or death. The author concludes that the confession in Mijukovis
prose does not fulfill its function as established by Christianity. The only exception for
Milinkovi is the story Blizu smrti [Near to Death] in which an optimistic ending is implied. 39
The fact is that the "optimistic ending" is implied, yet the question is from whose positions it can
be seen as a positive the father's or the daughter's. The conclusion of Milinkovis stimulating
interpretations of confessional genre seems to me equivalent to the finale of the story Blizu smrti
[Near to Death]. Although forgiveness is only deceptive, the relief is present, just not in the key

37 Alterity is a philosophical term meaning "otherness", strictly being in the sense of the other of two
(Latin alter). In the phenomenological tradition it is usually understood as the entity in contrast to which
an identity is constructed, and it implies the ability to distinguish between self and not-self, and
consequently to assume the existence of an alternative viewpoint. The concept was established by
Emmanuel Levinas in a series of essays, collected under the title Alterity and Transcendence. See,
Emmanuel Levinas, Alterity and Transcendence (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999).

38 Julia Kristeva, Powers of Horror, 124.

39 Jelena Milinkovi, Ljubav kao performativni in.

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which towered in the previous interpretations of the story. Leposava Mijukovi seduces her
readers with penchant for paradoxes. But her openness to experience existential paradoxes makes
her prose a reading challenge.
The narrator is visited by her girlfriend in the hospital, the girlfriend who caused her
emotional state, which resulted in a suicide attempt. Friend's arrival is one of narrative "clips" to
the story Utisci ivota [Impressions of Life], and an allusion to the homoerotic nature of the
relationship which resulted in a suicide attempt. The narrator refuses communication with her
girlfriend. However, the key visit is the fathers visit. Zato mi i sada brane da budem
srena?,40 is the first narrators thought after she meets the loved ones, sve mi se inilo da su
oni sada tu samo da mi silom nametnu ono od ega sam ja sada toliko daleko bila i ega sam se
gadila ... toliko gadila; a da mi otrgnu ovo to me je beskrajno usreivalo... 41 The reproachful
glance she sees in their faces was not a rebuke addressed to attempt suicide, but that of failed
expectations. For them her shot was the refusal of playing the identity role. She wants to make
the deflection, but their presence again impel her to think about herself in the context of
opposition the spiritual/corporeality. It is the rebuke because the narrator negates the body, which
is the symbolic synonym of the corporeality, corporeality standardized by the reproductive
function, and female identity. The narrators re-legitimating implies the acceptance of the social
inhibition and the proscription of regulatory norms. The narrator of Utisci ivota [Impressions of
Life] i Blizu smrti [Near to Death] tried to reshape gender formative significations, and she was
punished for this. It remains an open question how much a hug with her father, which ends the
narration, represents her return. The return which means ensuring ontological status in the field
of socially visible beings. Does the author only gender modified the motif of the return of the
prodigal son? The event that preceded the episode of "reconciliation" the narrators dream
provides the ambiguity to the final stage. The narrators dream questions the confession mode or
catharsis inherent to Christianity, that is attributed to it, and encourages me to view it from a new
angle.
The narrators dream in dithyramb rhythm and idyllic landscape evokes Sapphian
iconography into its circle. The dream full of impulsive outbursts and bodily pleasures opens the

40 "Why would they stop me from being happy even now?": Leposava Mijukovi, Blizu smrti, 34.

41 "I felt that they were now here only to force upon me that from which I am now so far and what I was
disgusted by ... so disgusted; and tear away from me what made me endlessly happy ... ": Leposava
Mijukovi, Blizu smrti, 34.

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narrator to her own alterity. The narrator becomes ecstatically intimate with alterity, intimate in a
way of mystical experiences, which are articulated in oneiric and hallucinatory dimensions:
I eno gomile vesele, bujne mladosti, uri se nekud i, kao, tu sam i ja! ... To zdravo, bujno
veselje i mladost zanosi me ... U daljini odbleskiju bledo-zeleni, umoviti breuljci prema
mladom, prolenom suncu, prelivaju se u bezbroj preliva i mame neodoljivo k sebi ... I
mi hitamo tamo! (...) Gluha, sanjiva tiina ume razbi se oas naim pomamnim veseljem
i stara, podmlaena uma zapeva s nama zajedno silnu pesmu mladosti i ljubavi .. I
pesma bruji gromko, skladno ... uzavrela krv iba kroz ile, palei mlado, uzdrhtalo
telo ... Dua drhti ... a ja priteem, priteem rukama prsa, zadravajui silom mahniti
vrisak da ne poremetim savrenu skladnost pesme ... Ali oseam kako ne mogu da ga
zadrim, i kako je ba to dobro to ne mogu ... Neodoljiva bujica strasti navire sve jae i
jae, ja se upinjem da je zadrim, ali snaga malaksava ... I jo samo malo .. i jo malo i
brana pue! ... Ja posrnuh, pa ciknuh mahnito, divlje padoh u travu... 42
After awakening, the narrator in "cathartic" condition surrenders to her father's arms. From the
father's perspective, the embrace marks daughters return to the Symbolic, in Lacanian terms,
that is asking for forgiveness, a refuge. At that point her speech stops. In the last segment of the
story, the narrator is addressed by the medical doctor whose questionably intoned words suggest
that to live is still sweet. But her response is missing. Her condition is marked by pleasure,
boundless love for all people and creatures, by vigor, but also by the lack of speech. The speech
ends, the testimony of her own abjection, her own familiarity with abjection the narrator keeps to
herself. The narrators silence is the rejection of her testimony in front of the other, who resolves,
clears up and removes difficulties. The narrators silence isnt the authors silence. On the
contrary, the narrators silence is the authors richly symbolic gesture or speech. Modern writers
do not give up from the heritage and experience of abjection. They found dismissal in union with
abjection. The act of writing is the "catharsis unparalleled", the art is a space of liberation.

42 "And there is the crowd of happy, exuberant youth, in a hurry to go somewhere, and, it seems, I am there too! ...
It's healthy, vigorous joy and youth fascinates me ... In the distance flare pale green, wooded hills against the young,
spring sun, spilling over into countless shades and irresistibly lure to themselves ... And we hasten there! (...) Deaf,
sleepy silence of the forest is just like that wrecked by our frenzied joy and old, rejuvenated forest sing along with us
a mighty song of love and youth.. And the song hums loudly, gracefully ... ebullient blood vessels through the veins,
burning the young, trembling body ... The soul trembles ... and I tighten, tighten the hands on my chest, forcefully
restraining frantic scream trying not to disturb the perfect harmony of the song ... But I feel I cannot hold it, and that
I cant is what is good... Irresistible torrent of passion floods stronger and stronger, I try hard to keep it, but the
strength collapses... And just a little bit.. Yet a little while and the dam snapped! ... I stumble, and squeal
deliriously, falling wildly into the grass ...": Leposava Mijukovi, Blizu smrti, 35.

15
Leposava Mijukovis prose diptych itself confirms Julia Kristevas assessment about modern
literature in its multiple variants, and when it is written as the language, possible at last, of that
impossible constituted either by a-subjectivity or by non-objectivity, propounds, as a matter of
fact, a sublimation of abjection. Thus it becomes a substitute for the role formerly played by the
sacred, at the limits of social and subjective identity. But we are dealing here with a sublimation
without consecration. Forfeited.43
The confessional form of the stories Utisci ivota [Impressions of Life] and Blizu smrti [Near to
Death] imposes the topic of the autobiographical in previous studies dedicated to Mijukovis
prose. However, the nature of articulated selfhood can be a starting point for the relativization of
biographical, positivist reading of her prose. Sidonie Smith argues that twentieth-century women
writers used autobiography as a constructive field for cultural critique. She notes that from their
myriad positions at the margins, these autobiographers write beyond the ending of
conventional narrative and its closures () As they do so they challenge the discourses of
patriarchal culture and narrative with combative power, dramatizing the encounter between
margins and centers. Contesting old notions of self [unitary, irreducible, well-defined, stable, and
impermeable] and story, they effectively destabilize generic margins, rendering the genre
flexible.44 The narrative self as is formed and presented in Mijukovis prose, in fact, confirms
the weakness of autobiography, the inability of writing of ones own life that depends on
establishing a consistent identity, which is a traditional demand of this genre.
The articulation of subjectivity in the autobiographical genre involves meeting with the
ideological and political discourses of power through which the subjective position can be
modified. The need to be a willing, unchangeable and rational being is created due to ideological
pressures within state, religion, or family. The power of discourses that seek to shape knowledge
can be confronted with some subjective positions. A struggle that subsequently arises then
manages the autobiographical texts. Felicity Nussbaum notes that through the autobiographical
an individual can be identified with a subjective position that is imposed upon him/her at a time
when s/he was reviewed by the society. Also, the counteraction of available subject positions is
possible, and the third possibility is de-identification because subjects occupy incompatible

43 Julia Kristeva, Powers of Horror, 26.

44 Sidonie Smith, Self, Subject, and Resistance: Marginalities and Twentieth-Century Autobiographical
Practice, Tulsa Studies in Womens Literature, Vol. 9, No.1, 1990, 21.

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subjective position.45 The narrator in the story Blizu smrti [Near to Death] only seemingly settled
with her father, and a worldview that he represents. Her renegade of the language encrypts her
real incompatible subjective positions. I do not deny, of course, the possibility that Leposava
Mijukovi transposed her own life experience into fiction. But, I think the process of
lateralization is more important. In a time in which she lived and created, the lateralization was
the only way to express a dispersion, contingency and performativity of gender identity.
Precisely, homosexual identity, which counts on the ambivalence and slippage and which escapes
from patriarchal censorship.
Departure from the autobiographical, confessional mode of narration does not have to result in
the re-construction of the authors biography. On the contrary, this approach could be directed
towards deconstruction of both the genre itself and identity that shapes the narrative, which also
makes the author akin to modernist female writers such as Colette, Virginia Woolf, Gertrude
Stein, who also experimented with the confessional genre articulating homosexual identity.46
Therefore, the tears of the prodigal daughter in her father's arms can be seen, if not consistently
in the Butlerian key, then certainly in the subversive one.
At the dawn of the 20th century the subject of Leposava Mijukovis prose is what will
become actuality in the literature of the last century. Originating in her poetic-aesthetic features
the prose of Modernism, at the same time Mijukovi transcends them and approaches the
interwar Expressionist literature. The coping with wild Eros makes her, primarily, close to the
aesthetic of Expressionism. Her closeness to Expressionism is evident in the narrative strategies
(fragmentary, associative narration) and stylistic feature (rhetoric of oration, cinematic style,
unconventional use of punctuation). Nevertheless, most challenging is the concept of a central
character in Mijukovis prose intellectuals and rebellious women. The identity of the subjects
of her prose is a focal point of her subversive opposition to the dominant patriarchal ideological
pattern. By examining the unique features of identity in Expressionist prose, Bojana Stojanovi-
Pantovi allocated the final dissociation of the subject that begins in the era of Symbolism,
which izaziva potrebu za njegovim novim konstruisanjem, koje se najee odvija kroz viziju,

45 See, Felisiti A. Nusbaum,Politika subjektivnosti i ideologija anra, Polja, Novi Sad, Vol. 459, 2009,
86.

46 See, Jan Hokenson, The Pronouns of Gomorrah: A Lesbian Prose Tradition, Frontiers: A Journal of
Women Studies, Vol. 1, 1988, 62-69.

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san ili halucinaciju, povezujui kroz razliite formalne postupke fragmente jedne nove
realnosti47. The dominant Expressionist thematic complex includes erotic experience, as well as
the physical and spiritual antinomy, and the concept of sexuality as an elemental force in the
biological and psychological sense, in the wake the one of the naturalists, but also under the
influence of Freud's psychoanalysis.48 The aforementioned aspects of Expressionist prose are
dominant feature of selfhood in Mijukovis prose. Hence, the contextualization of her works
within the course of Serbian Expressionism would revise its poetic map and rooted theory about
the absence of women writers in the Serbian avant-garde.
Leposava Mijukovi can be seen as the precursor of both Serbian avant-garde prose and
queer trends in Serbian literature, which were followed by interwar writers such as David Pijade
(1881-1942), Rastko Petrovi (1898-1949), Boko Tokin (1894-1953), Milo Crnjanski (1893-
1977) and Ranko Mladenovi (1892-1943).49 In particular, David Pijades novel Strast [Passion]
(1921) thematizes lesbian love, narrated from the cross gendered perspective as he exceeds the
borders of narration of the first person of male narrator and instead uses the female narration; the
technique that was used by Serbian female writers of the first decade of the 20 th century and by
Leposava Mijukovi herself in the story Pria o dui sa veitom enjom [The Story About the
Eternal Longing Soul]. This traditional arch of lesbianism fruitfully flows into Biljana
Jovanovis (1953-1996) novels in the late 1970s. The parallels between fiction of Leposava
Mijukovi and Biljana Jovanovi deserve special research, and here I will provide a note on
their thematic and poetic relatedness.
47"incites necessary for its new construction, usually done through a vision, a dream or a hallucination
and links through the various formal procedures the fragments of a new reality: Bojana Stojanovi-
Pantovi, Aspekti identiteta u poetici ekspresionizma in Zbornik radova. Knj. 2, Peti meunarodni
interdisciplinarni simpozijum "Susret kultura", (Novi Sad: Filozofski fakultet 2010), 956.

48 Bojana Stojanovi- Pantovi, Aspekti identiteta u poetici ekspresionizma, 956.

49 In the context of "gender trouble" and queer theory Rastko Petrovi is the author most written about
so far. See, Ivana ivanevi-Sekeru, Homoerotizam u putopisima Rastka Petrovia in Kako (o)pisati
razliitost? Slika Drugog u srpskoj knjievnosti, (Novi Sad: Filozofski fakultet, 2009), 37-48; Kristina
Stevanovi, Osvajanje modernog (Novi Sad: Akademska knjiga, 2012), 211-233. Bojana Stojanovi-
Pantovi suggests that this may be the key of interpretation of certain works by Milo Crnjanski, Stanislav
Krakov and Ranko Mladenovi. So far, queer identity in the novels Strast by David Pijade and Terazije by
Boko Tokin has been written about in the Slovenian language only. See, Suzana Tratnik, Lezbina
zgodba: literarna konstrukcija seksualnosti (Ljubljana: kuc, 2004). The book has not been translated
into Serbian or English.

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 At the root of Mijukovi stories about lesbian identity is the story about a decentered
and disingrained subjectivity. It is something the 20 th century literary experience will perceive
from the reflexive perspective. Leposava Mijukovi illuminates one of the archetypal paradigms
of modern literature, the conflict of the individual and society, from a gender perspective.
However, the gender perspective did not narrow the authors ideological and symbolic horizons.
The experience of her narrator is the experience that, in its protean forms, can be recognized in
the experience of a twentieth-century literary outsider, persecuted by different ideologies. The
issues that preoccupy Mijukovi still meander through contemporary reflection of human
existence and its literary transpositions.

zarkasv@yahoo.com

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