Poetry As Memory

         The poem "Krvava Bajka," or "A Bloody Fairytale," by Desanka Maksimovic, is an excellent illustration of how a historical incident like the Kragujevac tragedy can be commemorated apolitically. ³⁴ This poem focuses on the human tragedy itself and it speaks volumes without making a political statement, not even a subtle one. An understanding of the political and military intrigues in the Balkans during the Second World War is absolutely unnecessary to capture the essence of this poem. It chronicles the senseless and brutal deaths of hundreds of schoolchildren in the evocative, true language of poetry. "A Bloody Fairytale" is free of political agenda by its very subject: it speaks of the premature end of young lives, employing imagery from everyday life to vividly express the utter sadness of the Kragujevac massacre. The language is simple, the message straightforward. It is a classic lamentation, grief at its most basic level, packaged in flowing verses. It incorporates elements of style especially prominent in Balkan folk poetry, such as stanza repetition and other common poetic devices like rhyme—in Serbo-Croatian the rhyme scheme is abbab for the repeated stanza—and metaphor—"blue arch" of heaven is noted. ³⁵

         The dramatic framework of the poem "A Bloody Fairytale" is the element that makes it an exceptional poem. In this case, the event is the not the usual death by accident, ill health or old age. This poem memorializes the deaths of hundreds of schoolchildren, who were selected, with incomprehensible malice, especially because they were children and their deaths would punctuate more fully the German call to end resistance. ³⁶ The only allusion to something of a military nature in the poem is the use of the word "ceta." This word is usually used to describe a group of soldiers. With her line "a company of small ones," referring to the children, Maksimovic makes a particularly ironic statement: the innocent children are being punished in a manner so brutal it is not fit for even the soldiers of the enemy. She compares the children's death to that of a martyr and she respectfully refrains from mentioning those responsible for their death, as it would ruin the forlorn and grief-stricken tone of the poem with anger. Rage will not bring the little martyrs back. All that remains is to immortalize them with an appropriate lamentation.

         Desanka Maksimovic's poems share the characteristics of simplicity and deep-running emotion. Before the Second World War, her subjects ranged from childhood to nature but with the war came her transition into poems concerned with national, Yugoslav history, essentially poems commemorating the dead and lamenting the many tragedies Yugoslavia suffered during that time. Even though her later poems are concerned with her country, they, like "A Bloody Fairytale," are thematically concerned with human suffering rather than who was fighting whom. ³⁷ Her poems deal with how history affects people, not how politics and history mingle.

         Despite the apolitical bearings of "A Bloody Fairytale," it became a standard part of the middle school curriculum of schools in Yugoslavia. It was first published as part of a series meant for use in the seventh grade. The poem gained a new dimension with its introduction into the school curriculum: it was now a tool, purposefully chosen by Tito's government. With its tender words and melodic repetitions, it appealed to most people, and it was also a useful means of reminding people to concentrate on the tragedy itself rather than the circumstances behind it. After 1950, the Communist Party was well established, but it continued to protect and glorify its wartime image. As soon as it was published, children started learning it in classrooms all over Yugoslavia, not just in Serbia. Every schoolchild learned of Kragujevac in conjunction with this poem and this further solidified the consensus that, though the victims were almost exclusively Serbian, it was a national tragedy for Yugoslavia. ³⁸ While in Yugoslavia, I asked everyone I met if they had learned the poem as a child. All of them except two, who were 10 and 11 years old, could recite pieces of it from memory. All of the people who were from the Valjevo area, Maksimovic's birthplace, could recite the poem by heart in its entirety.

         I was once asked to present a lecture on Ireland while I was in Belgrade, Yugoslavia. I took the opportunity to ask the approximately 100 seventh grade students if they still taught "A Bloody Fairytale" in middle schools in Serbia. Their answer was unequivocally yes. Suddenly and simultaneously, various phrases from the poem were floating across the room. My inquiries certainly did not meet the standards of an official poll, but the results were telling. During my travels in the Balkans, I also went to Slovenia and Croatia, and there I made the same inquiries. My results were again affirmative. Children who had entered school since the civil war did not know the poem. Everyone else did. The poem, commemorating Kragujevac, was learned by almost every student in Yugoslavia for almost fifty years. Along with it, a certain perspective of the massacre was unwittingly internalized and historical consciousness was created: the Partisan actions that prompted the reprisal were minimized. Of course, the final guilt lies with the Germans, but the Yugoslav people, unless they were very alert "consumers" of information or from a Chetnik family, were never given the opportunity to assess the Partisan role for themselves.

         I infer from its tone, style and specific diction that the poem was written with the purest of intentions. The author wanted to give the world a lamentation for the young lives lost at Kragujevac in 1941. And like so many other governments before, the Communist government of Yugoslavia utilized this piece of art and the massacre itself to further its own goals. "A Bloody Fairytale" incidentally had the effect the government desired and, true to its author's intentions, contributed greatly to the effort to raise public consciousness of this tragic loss of life and to lament it properly. This poem fostered solidarity and unity among the people of Yugoslavia; it gave the generations that came after the war a common point of reference; it educated them about their own history and the tragedies they must guard against; and it, not coincidentally, helped distance the Partisans from any responsibility for the massacre.

         "A Bloody Fairytale" was also included in a book about Draza Mihailovic, the leader of the Chetniks. It is a book sympathetic to the Chetnik movement. The poem is quoted in its entirety in the chapter entitled " The Kragujevac Tragedy." ³⁹ Astonishingly, the author tries to implicate the Chetniks in the raids that triggered the bloody German reprisal. In this case, it has become an issue of shame for the Chetniks that they shied away from the German challenge. As we established above, it is the Partisans with whom at least some responsibility rests for the reprisal at Kragujevac. This is an example of struggle for tainted glory. The question still remains: was any measure of Partisan success worth all those lives?

'We are Serbian children! Shoot!'

How all of us can be proud knowing that in the whole history of the world there is no such magnificent example. Those divine martyrs will live for centuries in our memory astonishing us with their immortal deeds..."⁴⁰

--Nikola Tesla on the Kragujevac massacre