{"id":305416,"date":"2017-03-09T16:30:00","date_gmt":"2017-03-09T16:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wdev.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent-dev\/2017\/03\/09\/fragile-travelers\/"},"modified":"2018-04-16T14:57:20","modified_gmt":"2018-04-16T14:57:20","slug":"fragile-travelers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/2017\/03\/09\/fragile-travelers\/","title":{"rendered":"Fragile Travelers"},"content":{"rendered":"

In Gustave Flaubert\u2019s Madame Bovary<\/em>, Flaubert attempted to highlight the ordinary, tired, and often crass nature of common expressions by italicising them within the text. When Charles, Emma Bovary\u2019s mediocre husband, expresses himself in a manner akin to that of a million other colourless men before him, Flaubert uses italics to lift the expression up from the page in order to highlight the character\u2019s paucity of creative expression. Here, Flaubert acknowledges, is a very boring man. And thus: Emma begins to dream of a life better lived.<\/p>\n

Jovanka \u017divanovi\u0107\u2019s novella, Fragile Travelers<\/em>, also contains a dreamer. Her name is Emilija, or Ema, which is surely not a coincidence. In her waking life she is a high-school teacher. In her dreams she is much more: philosophical, introspective, able to fly, carrying a serpent baby in her womb. Dream things. And she has, perhaps accidentally, captured a man within her dreams.<\/p>\n

Petar Naumov, an architect, lucky with the ladies, and bored at home, is this man. The opening chapter, which is narrated with a cool detachment that juxtaposes pleasingly with the later chapters which are told almost entirely in first-person, has Petar\u2019s wife return home to discover that he might have been burned up in a house-fire, although the evidence for this is more than a touch sketchy. On the fourth page of the novella we are told, \u201cOn his way to buy some coffee, Petar ended up in a woman\u2019s dream\u2014and got stuck there.\u201d So has he died, or is he missing, or has something else entirely occurred?<\/p>\n

Lest this concept frighten the less intrepid reader, \u017divanovi\u0107 takes pains to assure us that this novella, though it may explore difficult themes in a challenging manner, will remain, in terms of style, light and welcoming. Here is Petar\u2019s wife An\u0111elija reflecting on her life immediately upon discovering that her husband has likely burned to death:<\/p>\n

\n

She\u2019d just come back from a seminar organized by a well-respected, globally renowned insurance company where she had recently secured herself a job. She\u2019d learned how to convince people that there was nothing more urgent or more important than insurance.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n<\/p>\n

This playfulness continues in chapter titles, which includes such examples as Chapter 8, \u201cAssociation Games are for Experienced Players Only,\u201d or Chapter 7, \u201cThe Importance of Hydro Potential in Maintaining Mental Hygiene.\u201d <\/p>\n

These chapters alternate relatively smoothly between Petar and Ema as they explore these dreams and attempt to come to terms with the people they have ended up becoming, and how that reflects on the man or woman they wish to be. Such introspection runs the risk of coming across as maudlin and self-indulgent, akin to the plaintive musings of a sullen sixteen year old, but by using the idea of the dreamer and the dreams, these traps are almost entirely avoided, and instead \u017divanovi\u0107 is able to dig deep to discover the true yearnings of her characters while retaining a light tone. Consider:<\/p>\n

\n

I admired everything about him because of my idiotic enthusiasm for people who could do everything that I couldn\u2019t: pilots, parachutists, divers, surgeons, high-rise window washers, professional prostitutes, jugglers, and practitioners of other marvelous crafts.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n<\/p>\n

It is hard not to smile at the phrase \u2018idiotic enthusiasm.\u201d \u017divanovi\u0107\u2019s writing reminds one of Gon\u00e7alo Manuel Tavares habit of blending the clever with the witty or, perhaps closer to home, the writing of Svetislav Basara, particularly the funnier parts of The Cyclist Conspiracy<\/em>, or the entirety of Chinese Letter<\/em>. \u017divanovi\u0107 remains aware, however, that a character thinking a thought is not sufficient to elevate it to the profound. Again borrowing from Flaubert, when characters think with humdrum thoughts, a similar technique of italicisation is utilised. For example: \u201cMy accomplishment was really something to take my hat off to.<\/em>\u201d Instantly the text elevates the banal by drawing attention to it. <\/p>\n

Petar and Ema, as the novella progresses, become bound closer together as Petar begins to understand the dream world in which he has found himself, and Ema comes to terms with her inner and outer fragility. Wanting\u2014or needing\u2014a protector isn\u2019t necessarily a sign of weakness, and being able to protect another person doesn\u2019t always mean that you are strong. <\/p>\n

It\u2019s worth noting that, although the word \u201cdream,\u201d or some variation thereof, has been used ten times in this review, Fragile Travelers<\/em> is, in fact, a readable, concrete, tangible piece of work. Yes, there are times when a character\u2019s brain will (metaphorically) jump from his head and frolic in the grass like a sheep, but more often the novella is written to be understood\u2014it is well anchored in reality. This is a novella about dreams that refrains from being dreamlike. The occasional use of an omniscient narrator further anchors the text, which provides the reader with the comfort that, no matter how far the text may roam, there is always a light shining the way home. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In Gustave Flaubert\u2019s Madame Bovary, Flaubert attempted to highlight the ordinary, tired, and often crass nature of common expressions by italicising them within the text. When Charles, Emma Bovary\u2019s mediocre husband, expresses himself in a manner akin to that of a million other colourless men before him, Flaubert uses italics to lift the expression up […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":166,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[67486],"tags":[3306,65446,65466,65456,65436,1646],"class_list":["post-305416","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","tag-dalkey-archive","tag-damian-kelleher","tag-fragile-travelers","tag-jovanka-kalaba","tag-jovanka-zivanovic","tag-review"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/305416","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/166"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=305416"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/305416\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":315606,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/305416\/revisions\/315606"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=305416"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=305416"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=305416"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}