Yugoslav Languages and Literatures in the United States, 1900-1945: a Survey

At the turn of the century Siavistics was in its infancy in the United States: it was only in 1898 that Leo Wiener, the first person to be employed to teach a Slavic language-Russian was appointed to the Harvard University faculty. To the best of my knowledge, there were no regular offerings of any South Slavic language at an American university until the 1920s when Serbocroatian was introduced at Columbia University. I Given the interest which the Yugoslav languages and literatures have attracted during the past two decades, it comes as something of a surprise to look back and see that there was little in the way of American scholarly writing about them during the first four decades of this century, i.e. between 1900 and 1945. 2 In part this apparent neglect can be explained by the fact that that the study of the literatures especially was still in its infancy in the Yugoslav lands at the turn of the century. At the same time, I should note that many of the now famous Yugoslav authors who have been the subject of recent intensive study did not begin their literary careers until the second third of this century. A second, and more obvious reason is that there were few, if any, people in the United States whow knew the languages outside of a small group of "native" intellectuals, few of whom took an active role in bringing this literature to the attention of a wide pUblic. (Also, there were few grammars available to those in the United States who wanted to learn these languages.) Third, and finally, we may note that the early part of the twentieth century was not a time when there was much interest in the languages or literatures of non-Americans, and the political isolationism of the United States of the period was reflected in a cultural isolationism. Yet, there was an interest in this area and we do find a number of signs which show us that there were precursors to the lively and intense scholarly attention which we now find directed at the languages and literatures of Yugoslavia. I shall divide this survey into two sections: (I) knowledge of the literatures (folk and bellelettristic) and the scholarly study of them; and (2) work done on the languages themselves, including grammars and dictionaries, as well as scientific studies along the lines of what we now consider linguistics. It is difficult for us today to accurately access the knowledge of or the interest in the languages and literatures of Yugoslavia in the United States in the 1900-1945 period, because we tend to interpret things in modern terms rather than seeing them in the context of their own time. Still, I believe that some patterns can be seen. For the purposes of this paper, I have used the following criteria for deciding whether a work should be considered as appropriate: First, the work, if one of literature, was published in English translation. Although there was some publication of works in the languages themselves, it would be foolhardy to presume that there were many outside the "natives" who could, or did, read them in the original. Second, the work was published in either book form or in a journal (or magazine) which was available in the United States. In this connection, I have included a number of books which were accessible to American readers although published in England.