Borisav Stanković and Yakub Kadri

Abstract

(The literary process as a reflection of similar social situations)

The author of this article draws attention to several points of contact in the works of two notable Balkan writers who described similar aspects of social life. The author attributes the similarities in the description of social phenomena to the fact that during Borisav Stanković’s childhood the town of Vranje was still part of the Ottoman Empire and its social norms and conventions, those of Ottoman society. Life in Vranje, as described by Stanković, developed as a Serbian or Balkan variant, as a parallel with Turkish society.

Affinities may be seen, first of all, in the description of the disintegration of the rich old families that both writers are favorably disposed to and inclined to idealize. Parallels can also. be drawn in the love histories of their heroines and the status of women in a traditionally patriarchal society, the discordant relationships between community and individual with the drastic scarifying of the individual to the community. Another interesting point on common in the works of these two writers is the phenomenon of fate to which their characters are subject.

The course of contact even though neither can be said to have influenced the other. The author of the article points out that these correspondences were conditioned by deeper associations, as a reflection of the similar social situations in which Stanković’s and Kadri's characters found themselves. The example’s given in the article show that a similar social process was reflected in the works of not only a Turkish writer but also a Serbian writer who on the fringes of the Ottoman Empire was observing the disintegration of the “chorbajiski” class whose destiny did not differ very much from that of the Turkish feudal class - the Ottoman aristocracy.