Marta (Pravica) Trklja in Toronto writes about, Herzegovina - Spring of Clear Water

Even though she has not been in Herzegovina since 1985, Marta Trklja writes about her place of birth in her first historical novel. The theme of her novel leans on historical sources. It also relies quite heavily on five centuries of the Serbian Oral Tradition and their oral epic poetry, which she studied at York University in Toronto, Canada.

That today someone of Serbian origin, in Toronto writes a novel, in the English language with the action that takes place in 16th century Herzegovina, there is at a minimum - little or no probability. However, it did happen thanks to Marta (Pravica) Trklja, a woman from Trebinje who lives in Toronto for many years. Of course, Marta does not see her achievement as something extraordinary.

She talks about her life story in quite an ordinary way. “I was born in the village of Bijelač near Trebinje in April 1943. I am a daughter of the late Danilo Pravica. My mother was Danica; she was born in Drazin Do in the family of Miskovic. I completed my elementary school in Drazin Do.

In 1962, I moved to Belgrade, where I started to work in a bookbinding company, where they printed military materials. I worked there for four years. And then, found a new job at the Belgrade airport where I worked as a Teletype Operator for the following three years.”

A significant date for Marta was March 28, 1968. That was the date she emigrated to Canada. The following year she married Mato Trklja from the village of Podosoje near Bileca. In the next few years, much has happened. Marta and Mato had a son, Aleksandar. A few decades later, Aleksandar got married and together with his wife Jennifer, presented them with three grandchildren: Michael, Nicholas and Marissa.

For many years, not all Pravicas, from Herzegovina’s origin, have stayed in Canada. Different circumstances have made them cross the border and go to live in the United States. Aleksandar has done the same. When he got married, he moved to United States where he lives with his family in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Marta is a woman who likes to have order in her own life. Although she had relatives in Canada, she wanted to become self reliant as soon as possible. “While I lived in Belgrade, I completed several courses in the English language, so I didn’t have many problems finding my way around when I arrived in Toronto,” she said.

“Immediately upon my arrival, I enrolled in school to study the English language. The school had lasted six months, and then I continued some commercial course for ten months. I remember that one of the courses was typing. We had to learn how to type on the electronic machines. The teacher said that we were the first generation of students to learn how to type on such machines and that the innovation would make a revolutionary shift in administration. She had no way of knowing it, back then, of how many changes computers and internet would bring to administration in just a couple of decades.”

Thanks to learning, Marta found a job at the Toronto Credit Bureau. She had worked there for seven years, and then, one day something happened outside of anyone’s, even Marta’s expectations. She tripped and fell at work. “I received a direct blow to my spine with the damage to nine spinal discs. That put my life goals into stagnation for some two years. I decided to change my qualifications.”

After this accident, Marta had ten surgeries and one heart attack. In spite of everything, after two years of working on upgrading her English to the pre-university level, Marta registered at York University Faculty of Liberal Arts in Toronto in 1982. She graduated in 1987 with Honors Double Degree in English and Classical Studies.

“Upon completion of my studies,” Marta remembers, “they offered me a position at York University. I accepted the offer and I stayed at York University for the following ten years as a Career Advisor, helping students to plan their careers after graduation.”

Marta wrote poetry while she was living in Belgrade, (she was a member of the literary association ‘Desanka Maksimovic.’Recently she began to do that, which rarely and only few manage to accomplish, Marta started to write literature in the language, that is

not her mother’s tongue and became a qualified author by successfully publishing her book on Amazon.com. Marta continued, “While I worked with students at York University, I registered for a Master studies at the Department of English, where I

earned a Master of English Literature Degree in 1995. It was with special permission from the Committee, that I began my thesis entitled, “Serbian Oral Poetry 14th – 20th Century: Paradigms of Honor.” The aim of my thesis was twofold. First, it showed how in each example the oral poet juxtaposes the three systems of honor, places them in conflict and finally seeks ways to reconcile them. Second, it demonstrated that the concepts of honor, tensions between them, and modes of resolution expressed throughout the oral tradition remain a constant in the written epic creations of the twentieth century.“

The distance between this work on her Master thesis and the theme of Marta’s novel, at least initially, doesn’t seem large. Marta told me that from early childhood she loved to listen to stories about heroes from long ago.

“The deeper those stories went into the past, the more I was drawn to them- Those stories together with the oral epic poetry, which my father and grandfather recited, because they didn’t have a gusle, deeply affected my earliest intellectual development. It also influenced my earliest understanding about what our people had to go through under the century’s long pressure under the Ottoman Turkish oppression.”

For example, Marta portrays impelling a man on a pole in her novel. That kind of a scene is difficult to imagine even for those with a very rich imagination. Therefore, Marta leaned on the story, which her grandfather Risto Miskovic used to tell, a torture that he had witnessed as a child.

Marta continues, “All the stories from long ago that my grandfather and my father told us, I experienced deep within myself. Even then, as a child, I felt the pain of the wounds of my people and I tried to understand all that about which they talked about in the evenings. As I grew older and matured more, I started to read in earnest, especially about century’s old suffering of our women who had stoically struggled to survive. I came to understand that from the beginning of our history, from when we gained our religion and our nation, and throughout all the centuries, all the wars to defend their nation, Serbian mother carries a huge weight on her weak shoulders. That Serbian mother gave birth, raised and sent her children to wars, only to bury them when they were brought slain to her. Yet in spite of all the suffering, Serbian mother managed to persevere and last under that heavy weight. She never lost hope in a better future, nor did she ever allow her enemies to kill that which was spiritual in her.

Because she firmly believed that while her people’s enemies may be able to destroy everything on the physical level, they can never take anything from our people, if they as a people do not allow them to kill that which is human, that which is spiritual in them.

“On one hand that kind of attitude of our women” Marta said, “was one of the reasons why I wrote this novel – a need to go further than the traditional story in order truly to understand one part of history. On the other hand, my novel was inspired by my wish to learn something about one of my predecessors, from whom all that was left was a small garden, which we used to call Gruica’s Garden and the ruins of a small house beside it. My family knew a lot about seven generations who lived after Gruica, but about him, we didn’t know anything. I started to search the archives about the period of the resettlement of the population at the end of the fourteenth century during the oppression of the Ottoman Turkish invasion. I collected enough information for the foundation of this novel, but I couldn’t find anything about Gruica. This research has also helped me to form the main character, Angelina.”

Wounded Dove in Honor and Disgrace takes place in the first half of the 16th century in the imaginary village of Grujica’s Bridge. In this novel, Marta depicts the lives of an ordinary people, and especially the lives of women. From those groups Angelina stands out.

“Who, in fact, is Angelina?”“Angelina is that Wounded Dove in the story. She is a woman with great capacity to persevere, endure and to love. She is capable of

accomplishing some extraordinary things. In spite of finding herself sandwiched between the unimaginable norms set by the Ottoman Turks, and a constant inner fear from the attack by the outlawed slave-traders, who came from Dubrovnik; Angelina’s family, and the people from Herzegovina felt threatened by those outlaws on a daily basis. Inherited restrictions by traditional codes of behavior, among her own people, don’t help Angelina to have easier life. Unimaginable adversities make Angelina undertake drastic measures in order to save her husband from the Hecim Bey’s dungeons and at the same time to save her family honor.”

Marta said that this story depicts poverty of the population, and a search for that inner peace which is rarely found in those wounded souls. The story confirms a brutal truth that violence can only bring more reactive violence. In the midst of her predicament, “From the debt of her unimaginable sin, Angelina extends her hand to touch a cord in the human heart in order to make an everlasting and indestructible connection with the readers.”

It is clear that Marta doesn’t write solely about the real events. Her novel “Wounded Dove in Honor and Disgrace” is based “Little bit on history, and quite a bit on those five hundred years of human misery which was transmitted orally from generation to generation.

Archives can sometimes be a problem, but if Harvard University is not too far, then the problem is much smaller.“First,” Marta was telling me, how in Toronto, they have a bookstore, “Srbica”

Libraries are adequately supplied, and especially those at the academic institutions and Universities. At York University, there are several libraries. There are selective works of our literature there. I was especially moved and pleased when I went to Harvard University, with the intention to do the research for my Master thesis. I went there on invitation from the late Professor Albert Bates Lord. Professor Lord spent ten years in former Yugoslavia collecting and studying Serbian oral poetry. One cannot enter Harvard library without a member card, unless someone invites you as a guest. Professor Lord brought me there, showed me around and was about to leave me to my work. But, then we entered one room filled entirely with Serbian works of literature, I gasped. When Professor Lord saw how much I appreciated the fact that there were so many works of our literature, he smiled ever so gently and said in Serbian. “Mrs. Trklja there are 10,000,000 books in this library, it shouldn’t feel strange that we gave this much space to the Serbian works of literature.” I lifted my head up towards God and said reverently, ‘Forgive me for my ignorance.’”

I asked Marta, how outside of her literary themes does she look upon Herzegovina? She responded in a somewhat lyric tone.

“When I think about Herzegovina, and it happens often, I see her through the vision of my youth. I see her blue skies and her green forests through which peek the sharp edges of the rocks from our hills and her magnificent mountainous men. I see that beautiful Trebisnjica River, as it winds above the town, and then slides through Trebinje, making one uninterrupted continuous letter “S. I see the Sun in the West as it floats above Mount Bjelasnica before it suddenly begins to swim into the horizons, wishing to provide peace to the tired farmer from Herzegovina, so that he can rest until

at dawn the golden sun-rays come back above the hill of Leotar.”I have the impression that Marta is filled with Herzegovina. That is why I am not surprised when she said that in Herzegovina human life is

joined with nature and that Herzegovina is the most beautiful place in the world, especially when one is in love, even then when his/her love is not returned.

Of course, I asked Marta what is next on her agenda, are we going to wait long for her new book? “I am convinced by two things: first, that, if a man believes in himself, he is going to accomplish all of his goals. Second, I believe in that

old proverb that it is no shame to trip and fall, but it is shame not to get up. In the last nine years, I wrote three novels of which Wounded Dove in Honor and Disgrace is my first published work. My first novel is

entitled “Deina.” I have entitled the second novel “Melina.” Then the idea was born to write “Wounded Dove.” I left the novels, “Deina” and “Melina” in a rough form. I need to work more on both of them. I hope to publish “Melina” in 2012. I wrote “Deina” first. I will have to work on this one a little more. Just before I started to prepare this novel for publishing, I started to write my fourth novel. I will entitle it The Daughter of the Narcissist.” The theme of that novel is little deeper. This project will have to wait a bit because I intend to prepare my Master Thesis for publication first.

Thank you, Marta, for your time and for the stimulating conversation.

NEDJELJKO MARIĆ First published by Glas Trebinja, March, 2011

I HAVE WRITTEN ABOUT THE FORTITUDE OF OUR PEOPLE

Marta is, as she says, entirely apolitical. “So I do not want to talk about current events.” She is preoccupied more with the core of the problem ... – “Like a woman from Herzegovina, today I empathize with the suffering of my people. While writing this novel in English, above all, I wanted to inform my readers with the spiritual power of the people from Herzegovina. I know it's nice to write about these painful things that we must never forget. But it is also useful to write in foreign languages, so that others know of our miseries and injustices inflicted upon us. In today’s materialistically oriented world, I see Herzegovina as a source of clean water for all peoples of the world who are looking for a way to survive spiritually.