It is possible that after these more rigorously structured anthologies the editor wanted to go for something broader and bent on a more recent period. One can speculate that part of the reason for this disequilibrium is that Mikasinovich’s earlier theatrical anthologies were structured on a more balanced ratio whereby each playwright is represented by a single play and which also feature a larger selection of writers (including Aleksandar Popović). Interestingly enough, a similar uneven balance affects the work of Kovačević himself: his most renowned plays, from the first part of his career (1970s and 1980s) give way to his later plays (2010s). In the existing scholarship and criticism there is no prevalent view, let alone a consensus, about this kind of teleology. Unless further explanations and qualifications are made-and Mikasinovich does not make them-this ratio may well take on axiological connotations and indicate an aesthetic progress from Sterija to Nušić to Kovačević. the number of plays, accorded to each of the three playwrights: Sterija’s work is represented by a single play, in Nušić this figure rises to three and in Kovačević it peaks at five plays. Another peculiarity of Mikasinovich’s selection is the conspicuously uneven balance in space, i.e. While it is difficult not to agree that the trio should indeed be included in any translation canon of Serbian drama it seems unjust to exclude Aleksandar Popović (1929-1996), whose play The Revolutionary Road of Bora the Tailor was voted the best Serbian play in the second half of the twentieth century. Mikasinovich’s belief that his selection “embodies the best that Serbian comedy can offer” begs some questions. The common thread in all these comedies, regardless of their time of composition or their particular plot, is Serbia’s precipitous, never accomplished transition from a staunchly patriarchal society, driven by bonds of family kinship and the sacrificial myth of Kosovo, to a modern nation-state, marked competitive entrepreneurship, where success is reserved for individuals. Likewise, the plays selected cover a wide range of comic plots: from a group of sycophants, caught in the whirlwind of the revolution of 1848, who support the Serbian or the Hungarian cause as the wind blows (Sterija’s Patriots ), to a veritable menagerie of petty-bourgeois careerists, matchmakers and home-wreckers in the Serbian and, later, Yugoslav kingdom (Nušić’s Suspicious Character, Mrs Minister, and PhD ), to the allegorical representations of mentality patterns tinged with graveyard humor and absurd (Kovačević’s The Marathon Family, The Gathering Place, Larry Thompson, the Tragedy of a Youth, Kumovi: (A Comic Look at an Everyday Tragedy), Hypnotized by Love ). The editor’s selection frames three playwrights from three very different epoques and cultural milieus: the Serb from the then Habsburg province of Vojvodina Jovan Popović Sterija (1806-1856), the Aromanian-born Branislav Nušić (1864-1938), and Dušan Kovačević from the plebeian Western Serbia (b. Regardless of the editor’s explicit goal, there is necessarily a broader context within which such a mission can make sense: why exactly have those plays been selected and what are they going to do there? In other words, what is seen as comic in a given source culture at a given point in time and how is this quality conveyed in another time and another, target culture?Ī remarkably ambitious endeavor, Mikasinovich’s anthology goes some way towards addressing these questions. Yet, dispatching a play (or plays) originally written in a ‘small’ language into a vast, largely self-centred publishing market is similar to sending a man or-more in keeping with the comic nature of the subject-a dog into space. The editor seems to have been driven by what Ondřej Vimr defined as supply-driven translation: the plays have been rendered into English purely for the sake of their being available to English-reading audiences rather than meeting an existing demand in those audiences. The selection builds upon Mikasinovich’s earlier pioneering anthologies of South Slav drama, Five Modern Yugoslav Plays (1977) and Selected Serbian Plays (2016). The latest compilation from the scholar and anthologist Branko Mikasinovich brings together nine plays by three Serbian playwrights. Branko Mikasinovich (ed.), New Avenue Books 2018
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