Three Forsaken Poets Significant Absences in Balkan Modernism

Narratives dealing with the literary histories of South-Eastern Europe frame the canon of the nineteenth and twentieth century mostly in terms of rebirth, or re-awakening of a national culture. The literary history of Balkan modernisms and the avant-garde proves no exception to this rule. Its history has been often narrowed down to an often implicit monolingual canon with an ‘ethnic’ pedigree. This essay, although critical of these excluding mechanisms, does not propose a deconstruction of the national modernist canon. Instead, it wishes to reflect on alternative models for literary history, with alternative parameters that include figures of transition in terms of (national) language and ethnicity. It draws on three examples: Victor Tausk, Stanislav Vinaver and Monny de Boully.