FROM THE PEN OF MARTA PRAVICA TRKLJA

NEW NOVEL ON

THE TOPIC OF SLAVERY

WILL THE FILMMAKERS REACT TO MARTAS TOPICS?

Martas new novel is like a film script, and provides an excellent

opportunity for filmmakers to test their creative capacities on topics

that arise from myth and historical memory.

Author Marta Pravica Trklja had the

necessary courage to fill a historical gap that has been uncomfortable for other writers. For centuries, until recent times, we have not had or produced an authentic account of the past. The best literature, without remarkable bits of narrative, has been found in Church literature, in some more or less eloquent fragments of legal texts and in archival sources. With the exception of a few dramatizations on epic and medieval themes, we have had almost no pure literary prose about any historical events of the

Middle Ages. Hence, we have not developed common knowledge of plot until the 19th century, nor do we have a narrative with the historical themesespecially not novels. Author Marta Pravica Trklja, native of Trebinje, who lives and writes in Canada, has begun to fill that gap with her novels written in English: Wounded Dove in Honor and Disgrace, Powerful Master and His Slave Bride; Deina: A Matter of

Survival and Melina: A Departure From Tradition. Martas poetics are very simple. She has developed her own unique narrative style. Because she has been away from her native Serbian language for a long time, Marta has written her novels in English. Her literary techniques based on story

telling are not complicated and are quite in the tradition of a historical novel. Mrs. Trkljas story lines are not like the more modern ones, with hanging plots which can be told in any time. They are quite realistic stories related to specific historical events or long-term processes. In Canada, Marta has read among other things, everything she could find on the history of slavery in our region. She had before her folk tales, family legends, epic poetry, and several scholarly works that exhaustively explored the topic of slavery in several geographic areas in the then Ottoman Empire, especially in Bosnia and Herzegovina, in the Dubrovnik Republic and along the Mediterranean. The theme of "Wounded Dove in Honor and Disgrace, is about the tribute in blood, which was introduced by Sultan Murat II in 1420, in order to increase the number of able-bodied men to serve the expanding Ottoman Empire. The essence of this move was very complex; therefore, its perception in historiography is

multilayered. In some ways, the Sultan wanted to push the hereditary aristocracy from the political scene, which in some way had always threatened his power. Hence, the tribute in blood devshirme had been applied to non-Muslim children only; they in time rose mainly to higher military titles in the Janissary units. In the early days, they selected boys at the age of eight and ten and later they raised the boundaries.

A NOVEL ABOUT HASAN

PASHA PREDOJEVIC

Marta Pravica Trklja is in

the process of reviewing

the Serbian translation of

Wounded Dove in Honor

and Disgrace. She has not

yet decided whether to

print this novel in Canada,

the United States or in her

homeland. She is currently

collecting material for the

background for and is

starting to write the first

pages of the historical

novel about Hasan Pasha

Predojevic, about whom

there are many stories in

the oral tradition of Eastern

Herzegovina.

Marta writes about the "tribute in blood from the perspective of the parents whose child the Turks had taken, as well as from a child's perspective. At the same time, she brings into focus some fragments about their education and

subsequent career in Constantinople and in other parts of the Ottoman Empire. Marta not only integrates family drama into that summary, but also the narrative of the emergence of the imaginary village of Gruicas Bridge near the town of Trebinje, where most of the action takes place.

Angelina, the main character in the novel, like an ancient heroine is forced to tolerate the deepest temptations and heavy defeats that break the strongest and

THE STORIES FROM THE PAST

As the author said, "Since my early childhood I have been fascinated by stories and events from the past. The farther those stories came from the past, the more I was interested in listening to them. Those stories, together with the folk poetry my father and grandfather recited, deeply influenced my earliest intellectual development, giving me a sense of our nation in its age-old suffering. I felt as though I experienced nearly everything they told me. I have never forgotten any of their stories. Even as a child, I deeply felt the sorrow of my people and tried to understand it. As I grew up and started passionately to read, especially about the sufferings of our women who stoically fought for survival throughout the centuries, I realized that from the beginning of our history, since we got our faith and nation, throughout all ages, through all the wars, Serbian women carried a huge burden on their frail shoulders. They gave birth to sons, raised them, prepared them to fight for freedom, and buried them when they lost their lives. Nevertheless, they always managed to persevere under that heavy burden and never lost hope for a better future; nor, did they ever let their enemies kill their Serbian spirit. They firmly believed that those enemies could take away everything that Serbian people possessed, but they would never let them take their spiritual soul." In the conversation we had, Marta mentioned that she thinks about Eastern Herzegovina daily and sees it through the eyes of her youth. She remembers blue skies and green mountains, forests in which sharp rocks rise from the ground, and its wonderful, noble people. She remembers the beautiful River Trebinjica, meandering above the town and then gliding through Trebinje. She remembers the setting sun hovering above the hill of Bjelanica. Herzegovina is the most beautiful place in the world to her. Novelist Marta Pravica-Trklja earned a bachelor degree in English Literature and Classical Studies at York University in Toronto, Canada. She taught business English at Sheridan College and then worked at York University for ten years as a career advisor. She earned a master degree in English in 1995. The title of her thesis was Serbian Oral Poetry 14th20th Century: a Paradigm of Honor. In her thesis, Marta showed that each folk singer presented three systems of honor; patriarchal, patriotic and religious, and offered a resolution to their conflict. Marta argues that those paradigms of honor, the tension between them, and the way in which they are resolved remained constant in the written tradition. Martas novels can be found at Amazon.com. Amazon organizes competitions for the best novel of the year. Among the 5,000 books in the third round, Martas novel Wounded Dove in Honor and Disgrace, placed 250th. Marta Pravica Trkljas life was thorny and difficult, but she believed in herself and achieved her goals. She

is one of the founders of the Serbian charitable organization Jovan Dui and one of its most valued

members. SLOBODAN RUNDO

the most resilient spirits. Consequently, she manages to overcome all the troubles that come her way one after the other. She is fortunate to meet with her son again who became a Turkish Pasha. In the end, Angelina is able to make peace with the world around her in order to close her eyes in peace and quietly leave this world forever. Marta Pravica Trklja talks openly about the brutal times and about the internal social and national conflicts in the Ottoman Empire. While she could not avoid the known epics and stereotypes, by the end of the novel she has opened a real life perspective for all the actors in the action. In recent literature that has treated topics from Bosnia and Herzegovina in any way, Martas approach and ethical stance are very rare or almost nonexistent. The many pages of other authors are written identically in black and white terms, without any trace of moral shading about people in such a societal conflict. Written today about slavery, Martas epilogues act authentically and convincingly. In addition, her humanistic stories are open and they would most certainly be useful reading for those who are working on the resolutions of similar conflicts today. While Wounded Dove was inspired by the phenomenon of slavery in the atmosphere of the Ottoman Empire, Martas new novel, The Powerful Master and His Slave Bride, deals with the same theme of slavery in Christian Europe. She is telling a shocking and interesting story about a young woman Zlatomirka that takes place on the trading route between Herzegovina, Dubrovnik and Bari in the 15th century. The story begins when Zlatomirka disobeys her father by rejecting his decision to give her hand in marriage to an old man in return for a great number of golden ducats. Her solution was not to commit suicide, although she was on the edge, but flees her parents' home. On the run, she accidentally falls into the hands of slave-traders who sell her at the slave market in Dubrovnik. A rich, young, Italian aristocrat, Lord Emanuel purchases Zlatomirka and takes her to his estate near Bari.

Zlatomirka also planned to escape from him, but it became clear to her that her young master was not heartless. She learned that he was a person burdened with a difficult past, dominated by his father, a medieval despot, who was willing to undertake every evil even with respect to his own son. There follows a plot full of not only anxiety, dramatic events and uncertainty, episodes ranging from incest to gruesome violence, but also inspire moral transformations that alternate one after the other. Like Wounded Dove, this novel has been written also in the unpretentious, clear, forward moving style, without pause that would not leave readers indifferent. Marta keeps the readers in constant anticipation so they feel they simply must follow the main character, fear for her wellbeing, cheer her on, and in the process examine their own conscience and their ability to resist violence today in a completely different world. It should also be noted that Martas new novel, Powerful Master And his Slave Bride, like Wounded Dove, has exceptional visual effects. At times, it is like a film script and it presents an excellent opportunity for filmmakers to test their creative capacities on topics that are simply bubbling out of myth and historical memory.

Nedjeljko MARI