Abstract
Using some of the best-known examples from Croatian literature, this article examines the influence of censors on shaping the literary field in the second half of the nineteenth century and the first decades of the twentieth century. It compares the role of educated censors who supported the development of the literary field in the first decades of nineteenth-century Habsburg Croatia with that of censors who implemented the regime’s strict guidelines in the 1840s by banning books that had already been published with permission of a censor. Both types of censorship gave rise to political resistance, either through political struggle and illegal publication, or by means of covert literary devices such as allegory or Aesopian literary strategies. Moreover, the article highlights the problems of deciphering political allegory in the literary history of small nations, which tend to orientalise their literary heritage. In contrast to these tendencies, a new interpretation of the canonical text of Croatian literature, Smrt Smail-age Čengića [The Death of Smail-Aga Čengić] by Ivan Mažuranić, is offered here, presenting it as an example of explicit political commentary and a hidden literary response to strict censorship. A comparative analysis of his literary and political writings reveals their great importance both for the history of the Habsburg monarchy in the nineteenth century and for today’s Europe built upon the vision of unity within diversity.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
M. Brlek (1952) refers to a work by Crijević De Viris illustribus Ragusinus (Rukopisi Knjižnice Male braće u Dubrovniku [Manuscripts of the Library of the Friars Minor in Dubrovnik], Book I, Zagreb 1952: 209 F.), which emphasises that two lost cantos of Osman were also a consequence of censorship: “…that the Republic [a vassal of the Ottoman Empire, note by M. Brlek] confiscated them so that the Turks would not find out about them” (cf. Ravlić, 1960, p. 114). The cantos were completed by several authors, but the most successful additions are considered to be those of Romantic writer and ban Ivan Mažuranić, who also extracted a vocabulary that Gundulić had used in his epic. For a long time, it was thought that Mažuranić’s ingenious addition was a result of his philological meticulousness, thanks to which he only used Gundulić’s vocabulary.
Since Croatia and Slavonia were regna socia of the Kingdom of Hungary, the censors first reported to the Hungarian Court Chancellor and then to the Court Chancellery in Vienna and Count Sedlnitzky. At the local level, responsibility for censorship was assumed by the Chief Education Director of the Zagreb Cultural District (for scientific literature) and censors. There were only a few of them, covering different parts of the country. Since a major part of the cultural emancipation movement took place in the central part of the country (Zagreb), in this article I refer to the scope and procedures of one particular censor who was responsible for publications at that time. See Suppan, 1973, p. 215.
Ravlić (ibid.) enumerates the most important lists of Austrian censorship in the nineteenth century and describes its aims to make newspapers credible, interesting and clever, and plays appropriate without ridiculing virtue or promoting obscenity, malice or excessive cruelty.
Jembrih (2016, p. 151) describes Moyses’s dismissal in more detail and publishes, among other documents, a transcript of his letter in which Moyses states: I was “a censor for six years, and this was the only post in my life that I pursued assiduously besides my professorship, for I recognised its importance then. And I was not mistaken. With full knowledge of all the circumstances, I can say that in these six years of my work for the public interest and thus for the true freedom of Croatia, I did more than all those who have been wreaking havoc in this country since March 1848 until today. This is also proved by my success. On 3 January 1843, I was suspended from the royal regency, which was infected by ultra-pro-Hungarianism, and my dismissal was proposed to His Majesty….”
For the activities of this censor, cf. Horvat, 2003, pp. 110–11.
As Jembrih (2016) points out, Rakovac commented on these actions in his diary entry of 19 October 1843: “Today I read the list of banned books in the chancery of the Zagreb Academy and found Mali katekizam za velike ljude [Small catechism for great people] among them. Cheers! This is a year after its publication, in fact a year too late, since this little work was circulated in 1000 copies. It seems strange to me that all my works have been banned. […] This can only happen within the framework of the Hungarian constitution” (p. 73).
He dealt with the topic in Uvod [Introduction] of the first issue (pp. 1–3), and in the articles entitled “Želja rodoljuba” [The wish of the patriot] (pp. 7–11) and Zagrebačka cenzura [Zagreb censorship] (pp. 11–15). “Želja rodoljuba” describes the customary strategy of intellectuals in national movements to establish culture in their national language. Among their other requirements were the following: organisation and functioning of the Parliament; Croatian as the official language; establishment of a Croatian language department (called: chair at that time), a teachers’ school and universities; functioning of the theatre, national museum and writers’ association, as well as a commercial school and a vocational school. These were requirements that were met in the course of the nineteenth and early twentieth century.
Mácsik’s name is similar to the Croatian word “mačak” meaning “male cat, tom-cat”.
Cf. Jembrih, 2016, p. 55.
As Slavko Batušić points out (1978, p. 171), notorious minister Alexander Bach issued decrees that placed all theatre life under the control of the local police, who could “ban performances and punish directors and actors”. Comedies or works of other genres that criticised the church or state authorities or advocated national unity between Croats and Serbs were censored. In the twentieth century, theatre commissions disgraced themselves banning plays that were performed elsewhere with praise: for example, Goethe’s Egmont in 1932, when the writer’s jubilee was celebrated (ibid. p. 174). In this play, the Yugoslav censor was careful not to propagate any communist ideas and deleted the following sentence: “Must not every relation alter in the course of time, and on that very account, an ancient constitution become the source of a thousand evils, because not adapted to the present condition of the people? These ancient rights afford, doubtless, convenient loopholes, through which the crafty and the powerful may creep, and wherein they may lie concealed, to the injury of the people and of the entire community; and it is on this account, I fear, that they are held in such high esteem.” Transl. by Anna Swanwick, https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1945/1945-h/1945-h.htm.
Manifest was published anonymously and therefore it was long assumed that its author was unknown. Milorad Živančević (1988) proves Mažuranić’s authorship by means of Manifesto’s correspondence with Hrvati Mađarom, which Mažuranić published immediately thereafter under his name. The article was reprinted by Kukuljević Sakcinski, 1862 (pp. 350–356), Šulek, 1868 (pp. 312–323), Ježić, 1934 (pp. 152–156); and Šidak, 1952 (pp. 198–206).
As Agamben (1998, p. 54) shows, the sovereign and homo sacer are “the two extreme limits of order, […] two symmetrical figures which […] have the same structure and are correlative: the sovereign is the one towards whom all men are potentially homines sacri, and homo sacer is the one towards whom all men act as sovereigns.”
During his tenure, Mažuranić implemented liberal ideas to protect the public interest, but also liberal laws. Thus, he avoided initiating legal proceedings against the editors and publishers of the revolutionary newspapers Slavenski Jug and Südslawische Zeitung (1850) and bringing ex officio charges against I. Filipović and M. Bogović for the publication of the poem Domorodna utjeha [Consolation of the native] (Neven, 1852). During his political tenure as the first Croatian “Ban Commoner” (1873–1880), Mažuranić acted in the same manner, reforming Croatia’s legislation, health care and education system.
The publication of this article was supported by the Croatian Science Foundation within the framework of the project IP-2018-01-7020 Literary Revolutions.
References
Agamben, G. (1998). Homo sacer: Sovereign power and bare life (Trans., D. Heller-Roazen). Stanford University Press.
Barac, A. (1964). Hrvatska književnost, I. Književnost Ilirizma [Croatian literature, I. The literature of Illyrism]. Matica hrvatska.
Batušić, S. (1978). Hrvatska pozornica [Croatian stage]. Mladost.
Brlek, M. (1952). Rukopisi knjižnice male Braće u Dubrovniku [Manuscripts of the library of the Friars Minor in Dubrovnik], book I. Jugoslavenska akademija znanosti i umjetnosti.
Chvojka, M. (2010). Josef Graf Sedlnitzky als Präsident der Polizei- und Zensurhofstelle in Wien (1817–1848). Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Staatspolizei in der Habsburgermonarchie. Peter Lang.
Frangeš, I. (1963). Mažuranićev spis Hrvati Mađarom [Mažuranić’s essay Croats to Hungarians]. Forum II, 3(1), 2–91.
Horvat, J. (2003). Povijest novinstva Hrvatske 1771–1939 [History of Croatian journalism 1771–1939]. Golden marketing—Tehnička knjiga.
Jembrih, A. (2016). Tragom života i rada Stjepana Moysesa u Zagrebu (1829–1851) [Following the life and work of Stjepan Moyses in Zagreb (1829–1851)]. Hrvatsko književno društvo Sv. Jeronima.
Ježić, S. (1934). Ilirska antologija [The Illyrian anthology]. Mladost.
Kukuljević Sakcinski, I. (1862). Jura Regni Croatie, Slavonie et Dalmatie, pars II. Ludovici Gaj.
Lukač, S. (1999). Tko je prevoditelj spisa A’ Horvátok a’ magyaroknak [Who translated the essay A’ Horvátok a’ Magyaroknak]. Jezikoslovlje, 2(1), 127–146.
Markus, T. (1998). Dokumenti o hrvatskom pokretu iz 1849. Godine [Documents on the 1849 Croatian movement]. Časopis za suvremenu povijest, 30(3), 577–595.
Mažuranić, I. (1979a). Sabrana djela sv. 1. Pjesme. Smrt Smail-age Čengića [Collected works Vol. 1. Poems. The death of Smail-Aga Čengić]. Liber, Nakladni zavod Matice hrvatske.
Mažuranić, I. (1979b). Sabrana djela sv. 3. Proza. [Collected works (3 vol.). Prose]. Liber, Nakladni zavod Matice hrvatske.
Pederin, I. (2008). Austrijska cenzura i nadzor nad tiskom u dalmaciji [Austrian censorship and control over the press in Dalmatia]. Matica hrvatska.
Protrka Štimec, M. (2019). Politike autorstva [Politics of authorship]. Sveučilišna naklada.
Ravlić, J. (1960). Propisi za cenzuru i ocjene Gundulićeva Osmana [Regulations on censorship and reviews of Gundulić’s Osman]. Radovi Instituta Jugoslavenske Akademije Znanosti i Umjetnosti, 6–7, 97–113.
Šicel, M. (1978). Književnost moderne [Literature of modernism]. Liber.
Šidak, J. (1952). Historijska čitanka [Historical reader]. Školska knjiga.
Šišić, F. (1913). Hrvatska povijest, treći dio: od godine 1790. do godine 1874 [Croatian history, part three: From 1790 to 1874]. Matica Hrvatska.
Šulek, B. (1868). Naše pravice: Izbor zakonah, poveljah i spisah, znamenitih za državno pravo Kraljevine dalmatinsko-hrvatsko-slavonske od g. 1202–1868. [Our rights: A selection of laws, charters and writings, important for constitutional law of the Kingdom of Dalmatia-Croatia-Slavonia from 1202–1868]. Tiskom Dragutina Albrechta.
Suppan, A. (1973). Mjere cenzure protiv ilirskih listova Ljudevita Gaja [Censorship measures against Ljudevit Gaj’s Illyrian papers]. Radovi Instituta za Hrvatsku Povijest, 3, 213–239.
Suppan, A. (1999). Oblikovanje nacije u građanskoj Hrvatskoj (1835–1918) [Formation of the nation in civil Croatia (1835–1918)]. Naprijed.
Živančević, M. (1988). Ivan Mažuranić. Matica Srpska.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
Publisher’s Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.
About this article
Cite this article
Štimec, M.P. Censor’s scissors in Croatian literature: Shaping a(n) (inter)national community. Neohelicon 50, 591–602 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11059-023-00712-x
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11059-023-00712-x