Page 145 - Vinkler, Jonatan, Ana Beguš and Marcello Potocco. Eds. 2019. Ideology in the 20th Century: Studies of literary and social discourses and practices. Koper: University of Primorska Press
P. 145
Play, Chaos and Autonomy
in the Poetry of Hungarians
in Voivodina (Uj Symposion)
Roland Orcsik
The Yugoslav Seal
It is hard to resist the temptation not to think about Yugoslavia and Yu-
goslav artistic strategies as kinds of play. Johan Huizinga wrote about
the deep impact of play on culture and poetry in his well-known Homo
ludens in 1938. He demonstrated the precedence of the concept of play
to that of culture through examples from antiquity. It seems compulso-
ry to mention Huizinga’s volume in the first place when investigating the
concept of play. Roger Caillois (2001, 11–36) conceptualised types of play
based on this work: agon (contest), alea (luck), mimicry and ilinx (vertigo,
ecstasy, chaos). Yugoslavia as a kind of playground contained all of these
and also their opposite, which, according to Huizinga, is not seriousness
but an obligation towards fulfilling a cultural function.
Huizinga connects the concept of play to freedom/volition: “First
and foremost, then, all play is a voluntary activity. Play that is ordered by
someone is no longer play: it could at best be but a forcible imitation of
it” (1980, 8). If we project these two concepts, play and freedom, on the
various periods of Tito’s Yugoslavia, we may claim that they determine
its history already since the foundation of the state (29. 11. 1943). On the
one hand, one of the two taboos of the regime is expressed in the concept
of freedom since the partisans defined the fight against fascism as ‘peo-
ple’s liberation war’. However, representations of this ‘people’s liberation
war’ circumscribed notions of duty and moral responsibility. Freedom
thus lacked the irresponsible, useless playfulness. At the same time, play
is present in the construction of the country if we consider the fight and
contest for the foundation of the state which preceded the development
in the Poetry of Hungarians
in Voivodina (Uj Symposion)
Roland Orcsik
The Yugoslav Seal
It is hard to resist the temptation not to think about Yugoslavia and Yu-
goslav artistic strategies as kinds of play. Johan Huizinga wrote about
the deep impact of play on culture and poetry in his well-known Homo
ludens in 1938. He demonstrated the precedence of the concept of play
to that of culture through examples from antiquity. It seems compulso-
ry to mention Huizinga’s volume in the first place when investigating the
concept of play. Roger Caillois (2001, 11–36) conceptualised types of play
based on this work: agon (contest), alea (luck), mimicry and ilinx (vertigo,
ecstasy, chaos). Yugoslavia as a kind of playground contained all of these
and also their opposite, which, according to Huizinga, is not seriousness
but an obligation towards fulfilling a cultural function.
Huizinga connects the concept of play to freedom/volition: “First
and foremost, then, all play is a voluntary activity. Play that is ordered by
someone is no longer play: it could at best be but a forcible imitation of
it” (1980, 8). If we project these two concepts, play and freedom, on the
various periods of Tito’s Yugoslavia, we may claim that they determine
its history already since the foundation of the state (29. 11. 1943). On the
one hand, one of the two taboos of the regime is expressed in the concept
of freedom since the partisans defined the fight against fascism as ‘peo-
ple’s liberation war’. However, representations of this ‘people’s liberation
war’ circumscribed notions of duty and moral responsibility. Freedom
thus lacked the irresponsible, useless playfulness. At the same time, play
is present in the construction of the country if we consider the fight and
contest for the foundation of the state which preceded the development
