WORDS, WAR, WORK… EXPERIENCING A CROATIAN WRITER’S LIFE
Maja, you are a writer, and you work as a translator. How much are languages part of your life?
Languages have been an inseparable part of my everyday life for years. In fact, I could say that it all started at an early age when I began attending Alliance Française in Zagreb and learning French at the age of five. Through school and university, it became clear that languages and literature would be the direction of my future professional activities, which remains the case today. I have been working as a literary translator for many years and I am constantly in contact with French, English, and my native language. I also write prose and poetry. For over ten years I also worked as a journalist. So, I could say: what food is to a chef or numbers to a mathematician, words, sentences, and texts are to me.
Considering that like Maltese translators you translate works from major languages such as English and French to a language which is spoken by much less people, how do you feel about your own language? What does translation give to it? Do you every worry that “smaller” languages will succumb to major languages?
I am aware of the “smallness” of my native language and the fact that it will never become either grand or diplomatic. Like other small languages, it has long been “subject” to the dominance of larger ones. However, it might be more accurate to speak of its existence within global linguistic boundaries rather than submission. Croatian language has its history, is here and will remain here for some time. What I can do for it through my professional work is to strive to speak, write, and promote it as best as I can. Through my literary translations and authorship, I aim to present it in its correct form, preserving the spirit of my language. Any form of translation of works by Croatian authors into foreign languages is welcome, not only for the purpose of connecting cultures but also for promoting Croatian authors abroad. Language contains the cultural identity of its people. The more Croatian texts are translated, the more Croatian culture is spread around the world.
In your novel Je suis the One-armed, we have a main character, Ferid, who seems to be still affected by the Yugoslav wars. “Now he avoids life with the excuse of the war that took away his best years and the ones that followed.” How much does Croatian literature deal about such a theme? Is it still a taboo? Is it something you can’t stop writing about? Are you only starting to write about it now?
In my first novel, Je suis the One-armed, in the part of the novel that takes place in neighbour country Bosnia and Herzegovina, Ferid is a secondary character who, like many other people in that country, still feels the effects of the war and lives with a sort of post-war depression. Bosnia is a country that suffered great human and material damage in the last war, arguably the greatest in the former SFRY. Croatia also sustained great damage, and Croatian, as well as Bosnian literature, along with other literatures of our region, still largely deal with this subject. After the breakup of Yugoslavia, the newly formed countries gained their sovereignties but also faced new challenges. I wouldn’t say this topic is a taboo, but it is extremely delicate, and despite attempts and efforts towards reconciliation and normal coexistence, there are still certain “slippery terrains”. The war in these areas has profoundly shaped all our lives. I belong to a generation that experienced part of life before the war and grew up with it, and in the years when my academic identity and views on existence, religion, politics, and the state’s care for its citizens were forming, I witnessed many disappointments that come with living in a country that is just trying to establish its independence. Therefore, it is always at least a part of my literary interest; I don’t write exclusively about it, but it inevitably runs through my work. However, although war is by definition a destructive force that devastates, I believe that something new and different always emerges from it. This new and different, the birth of new structures, habits, views on life, or the inability to adapt to all of this – is the theme of every post-war literature.
There is no state, society, family, or individual where one can find unconditional refuge… If your homeland has in some way failed your expectations, or if the family you came from is dysfunctional, you know that a safe place, that locus amoenus, does not exist.
Apart from being a novelist, you are also a poet. Similarly, many Maltese authors work on both prose and poetry. How do you juggle between the two, alongside translation? Do you practice all three out of a sense of survival or do you need to express yourself in different forms?
Both, to some extent. Literary translation is primarily a job that I love doing, but it is also a source of income. So, the word “survival” here has more of a material connotation. For me, it is both a profession and a calling, as well as a form of survival. As for my own literature, I consider myself more of a prose writer than a poet, although I have tried both genres. Due to the large amount of work, I create literature more slowly. I let certain events and insights “mature,” and when I find the time, I write. Some aspects of life require different treatment. For example, I handled the delicate themes of home, family, and the core in a poetry collection because I felt that poetic expression would better convey the delicacy of the motifs and emotions.
I lived abroad for a long period (15 years) and partially explored that experience in my first novel, and now I am writing a second one where it will also find its place. Some “clusters, layers, and ribs” of life can last longer or shorter, and be experienced more or less intensely. Depending on this, it seems to me that it’s me who chooses the expression and genre, not the other way around.
I am quite struck by your verses “and few could ever guess … / how strongly they loved places / that weren’t home, especially people / they never even met” from “Women nomads.” Then in your other poem “Tomorrow We Will Make Fallen Angels” you state “millions of wheels stand in line towards home / there it is safe, there is coffee, wine, bread, internet and beds”. I also see you lived in different cities. What is home for you?
The poem “Women nomads” reflects a kind of internal identity concept that I often adhere to. I do not believe that home is necessarily that kind of warm family nest, conventionally said to be the pillar of society or the nest where a bird feels safe. Nothing in the world is secure. There is no state, society, family, or individual where one can find unconditional refuge. A person must be their own primary home. Perhaps this is why the lyrical subject is ironic in the second poem you mention. Nowhere is safe. If your homeland has in some way failed your expectations, or if the family you came from is dysfunctional, you know that a safe place, that locus amoenus, does not exist. And perhaps it is through the awareness of its utopian and elusive nature that you learn to seek new forms of refuge. This can be anything you enjoy or constantly return to because it represents some kind of your enduring inclination or loyalty. Whether it is identity nomadism, the urge to free oneself from domicile, personality, or landscapes you have not explored but admire for some reason – all these things are ways in which a person can find belonging. In my opinion, it does not necessarily have to be tied to national or family emblems. For example, if I wish or feel so, I can claim to belong to the sea because it is for me the greatest refuge and force of nature. Likewise, I can say that the sea has always been and will always be my “home” simply because I feel that my personality strongly clings to it. I have lived in Zagreb, Sarajevo, and Belgrade. For me, the question of domicile does not necessarily have to be related to definitions such as city, state, or family.
Finally, how do you feel coming to Malta (probably for the first time) for the Malta Mediterranean Literature Festival?
I have never been to Malta, and I am excited to meet its inhabitants and understand how it “breathes.” The Mediterranean, the islands, and the sea are also part of my interests in literature. I already hold the Maltese Mediterranean Literature Festival’s organizing team in high regard, as through ongoing contacts, I see that everyone is very professional and dedicated to presenting authors in the best possible way. I look forward to the exchange and collaboration.
First published on The Times of Malta, 14 August 2024.
