Resumen de Crnjanski in Pursuit of “Authentic” Spain
This paper focuses on the imagological analysis of the travelogues written by Miloš Crnjanski about Spain, with a special emphasis on his pursuit of authentic Spain. The journey is the means of establishing the privileged communication with the Other and the foreign traveler becomes a translator of the culture he visited in his home country.
In the modeling of the image of the Other’s affirmation and the negation or a critical view of the simplified images of an Othered nation, the perspective of a direct encounter with the Other is extremely important. That is why this paper researches the most common prejudice on Spain (such as vision of Spain as a country of flamenco, castanets and the opera Carmen, for example) and their rethinking within Crnjanski’s texts. The dialogue and the interpretative encounter of author’s perception and earlier stereotypes is noticeably in an endeavor to realistically confirm as well as deny the stereotypical image of Spain, mostly based on romantic preconceptions. The emphasis is on Crnjanski’s clearly articulated intention to unveil the essence of Spain in writing his texts and to transmit the image of “real” Spain to his reading audience.
Initially, Crnjanski, as most foreigners, starts from the common ideas about Spain as the country of flamenco and attempts to find a previously imagined Spain in the reality that surrounds him. His expectations often collide with the modern reality of Spain and the traveler has to accept that the reality does not match his prior imaginations of the Other. In Seville, for example, the foreign journalists recall the myth of Carmen and seek the femme fatale on the streets of the city without success. Crnjanski concludes that the reality is always different from the image that one previously had. In the Seville of the 1930s Crnjanski found the anarchists’ struggles, far from the vision of the poetic Spain, formed in the 19th century during the Romanticism movement, which influenced travelers even in the 20th century. A modern Spain that finally resembles the rest of the Western Europe was not attractive to foreign travelers, which led them to mix fiction with the reality observed in Spain and simultaneously prevented an objective perception and the direct approach to the Other.
The first impressions of a foreign country often determine the later perception as well. One’s arrival in the foreign country is generally decisive, because the traveler writes down his first impressions of the “foreign” and the Other, which sometimes remain fixed until the end of the trip. Therefore, the moments in which the traveler is reviewing his first impressions in accordance with the acquisition of new knowledge are important. That is why Crnjanski engages in a discussion about the backwardness of Spain in its traditions and the signs of modernity he also experiences.
The basis of Crnjanski’s division into two Spains is, first of all, Spain’s degree of modernization or falling behind. However, his conception of falling behind is not always one sided, in some cases the falling behind is identified with the images of the people’s living tradition, while in other places he means the social falling behind.
From that basic opposition others follow, such as the North vs. the South of Spain, the old vs. the new Spain, the real vs. the official Spain, the rural vs. the urban Spain, the Spain of foreign influences vs. the pure Spain.
