In Brave New World, which is the three-year motto of the International Literary Festival Vilenica, the perception of monolithic national identity is also changing. In literature, its main bearer is primarily language, yet in the twentieth century the linguistic boundary shifted toward a different understanding of nationality. The logical analysis of the limits of language as the limits of one’s own world by Ludwig Wittgenstein still offers us the possibility of rethinking national literature as a unified linguistic expression.
This year’s sub-theme of the International Literary Festival Vilenica is Fluidity of Identities. It is a broad concept that expands the boundaries of literary creation to previously unimaginable dimensions of multiple forms of expression, not only national ones, which this year’s Vilenica particularly explores. In a global world, national borders are becoming increasingly blurred; they are fading and shifting. The universal history of migration is further intensified by phenomena such as globalization, the Erasmus generation, and post-pandemic mobility. Wars, tragedies, and forced exiles accelerate migration. People have always moved, carrying their languages with them—often as the last refuge of writers deprived of their homeland.
The 41st edition of the International Literary Festival Vilenica thus draws on the philosophy of postmodernism and post-structuralism of Jacques Derrida. The French thinker, born in Algeria, argued that linguistic and cultural norms are not independent or unambiguous but are always in interaction with other norms and values depending on space, time, and countless other factors.
The idea of language that can become the final reflection of an inner homeland is also discussed by Zygmunt Bauman, who in his sociological study Liquid Modernity emphasizes:
“Almost two centuries ago, Alfred de Musset said that ‘great artists have no homeland.’ Two centuries ago these were militant words, a kind of battle cry. They were written amid the deafening fanfares of youthful and credulous, and therefore arrogant and combative, patriotism.”
Vilenica has remained faithful to the idea that great artists have no homeland since the festival’s very beginnings, as it was born out of the desire to transcend nationalism and to establish trans- or supranationality, embodied by the multilingual and multicultural concept of Central Europe. The choice of a fluid, flexible identity is therefore a logical way of re-examining the festival’s own reflection at a time when the international order is becoming increasingly unstable, and an atmosphere of anxiety seeks refuge in national, exclusionary monolithism. The paradox of this perspective dissolves in the realization that fertile ground for the flourishing of literary creativity lies precisely in the fluid encounters of different national perspectives in which creators are placed—or repeatedly displaced.
Over four decades, Vilenica’s guests have demonstrated this eloquently: from Milan Kundera, through Josip Osti, to David Albahari. All three moved—also from one language to another. World literature is full of eminent examples: from Samuel Beckett to Eugène Ionesco, from Joseph Conrad to Vladimir Nabokov. This year’s festival guests likewise come from diverse geographical backgrounds, and their writing is united by themes of migration, multilingualism, questions of cultural and linguistic identity, intercultural dynamics, and code-switching.
One of the most obvious proofs of this line of thought—though by no means the only one—are literatures that emerge in minority as well as ethnically and linguistically mixed environments, almost literally on the borders: political, national, ethnic, and, in the most intimate literary expression, linguistic ones, where the common denominator becomes precisely a fluid identity.
Vilenica guest Aleš Debeljak, who passed away ten years ago, once said of himself in Trieste that he was a foreigner to the world in his own homeland. In the book The Balkan Bridge he also discussed Aleksandar Hemon, who once stated that his position is not defined by national cultures, adding:
“I exist between two cultures, which is not an empty space but a space of overlap, where strange and unpredictable things happen, where distant experiences mix and new, more fluid identities take shape.”
Flowing, flexible, multilayered. Rich and abundant.
