Re:“Balkan Cosmology” by Bruce Sterling (2022)
by boomskats on Tuesday February 21, 2023 @03:46PM
(#34886953)
This is beautiful. I'm barely halfway through reading, but an engineer called Nikola from Serbia who took a ton of stupid risks but was ultimately successful, this story is the best thing I've ever seen posted on HN.
It is extremely well written, the author clearly completely absorbed himself into the local culture. So many of the seemingly random references are actually relevant and very clever.
Re:“Balkan Cosmology” by Bruce Sterling (2022)
by dendrite9 on Tuesday February 21, 2023 @04:00PM
(#34887215)
It really is great. I didn't expect to read the whole thing but I'm glad I did even if some parts seemed a little heavy handed. For whatever reason the bar descriptions and characters were particularly effective.
Re:“Balkan Cosmology” by Bruce Sterling (2022)
by TMWNN on Tuesday February 21, 2023 @03:56PM
(#34887145)
Indeed, what a great story. Sterling really conveys that peculiar Balkan mixture of wide-eyed fanaticism, suicidal revanchism, genius crossed with madness, and sullen fatalism.
>The Pan-Serb propaganda does exist, I admit it frankly, and I ought to know whereof I speak, because I am a Serb and a former subject of the Austrian Empire. But this Pan-Serb propaganda is not a political conspiracy, born and bred at Belgrade or at any other place in the kingdom of Servia. It is a natural heritage of every true Serb, who is ever ready to obey the voice of the Serb minstrel, the gouslar, which commands him and has always commanded him for five hundred years to struggle for the "honored cross and golden liberty." This voice was always the supreme commander in all Serb struggles against the Turkish oppressor, and it is today the supreme commander in the Serb struggles against Austrian tyranny. The causes of the Pan-Serb propaganda are in Vienna and not Belgrade. The tragedy in Sarayevo on the 28th of June was being prepared in Vienna during the last thirty-six years; it was enacted on the very day—Vidov Dan—when every true Serb celebrates the anniversary of the battle of the field of Kossovo, in 1389, when the Serb Empire fell. Its memory always served as a reminder to the Serbs that they must avenge the wrongs perpetrated against the race, and that by united effort only can they regain the glories of their ancient empire which vanished at Kossovo.
This is, let me repeat, Michael Pupin. He was one of the most famous scientists/engineers in the world in 1914, far more famous than Tesla, and even today is clearly the second most-famous Serbian scientist. A building is named for him at Columbia. He had lived in the US for 40 years. And yet, when a man and his wife are shot and killed just because they happen to be royalty, and the murder is likely going to start a general European war, Pupin's response is this rant (I can't think of any other way to describe it), written for a mass-market weekly magazine, about how such actions are the heritage—no, the *obligation*—of every Serb and have been for 500 years!
Re:“Balkan Cosmology” by Bruce Sterling (2022)
by boomskats on Tuesday February 21, 2023 @04:15PM
(#34887476)
This is also a great read, I've not seen it before.
> No map can do justice to the ethnological complexity of this region. The Serbs, Croats and Montenegrins are of the same blood, tho divided by religion and nationality. The annexation by Austria in 1908 of Bosnia and Herzegovina, both racially united to Servia rather than Hungary, destroyed their hopes of joining in one great Servian empire, and this disappointment gave rise to the bitter resentment against the Austrian crown which is now displayed.
It's quite interesting to think that even then, in the US press, Austrohungarian imperialism translated as 'preventing the Great Servian empire'.
It is extremely well written, the author clearly completely absorbed himself into the local culture. So many of the seemingly random references are actually relevant and very clever.
Along such lines, here is Michael Pupin in 1914, writing about the assassination of Franz Ferdinand and his wife <https://archive.org/details/independen79v80newy/page/n72/mod...>:
>The Pan-Serb propaganda does exist, I admit it frankly, and I ought to know whereof I speak, because I am a Serb and a former subject of the Austrian Empire. But this Pan-Serb propaganda is not a political conspiracy, born and bred at Belgrade or at any other place in the kingdom of Servia. It is a natural heritage of every true Serb, who is ever ready to obey the voice of the Serb minstrel, the gouslar, which commands him and has always commanded him for five hundred years to struggle for the "honored cross and golden liberty." This voice was always the supreme commander in all Serb struggles against the Turkish oppressor, and it is today the supreme commander in the Serb struggles against Austrian tyranny. The causes of the Pan-Serb propaganda are in Vienna and not Belgrade. The tragedy in Sarayevo on the 28th of June was being prepared in Vienna during the last thirty-six years; it was enacted on the very day—Vidov Dan—when every true Serb celebrates the anniversary of the battle of the field of Kossovo, in 1389, when the Serb Empire fell. Its memory always served as a reminder to the Serbs that they must avenge the wrongs perpetrated against the race, and that by united effort only can they regain the glories of their ancient empire which vanished at Kossovo.
This is, let me repeat, Michael Pupin. He was one of the most famous scientists/engineers in the world in 1914, far more famous than Tesla, and even today is clearly the second most-famous Serbian scientist. A building is named for him at Columbia. He had lived in the US for 40 years. And yet, when a man and his wife are shot and killed just because they happen to be royalty, and the murder is likely going to start a general European war, Pupin's response is this rant (I can't think of any other way to describe it), written for a mass-market weekly magazine, about how such actions are the heritage—no, the *obligation*—of every Serb and have been for 500 years!
It also happened that they were occupying Bosnia, where neither Austrians nor Hungarians lived, but Serbs did.
> No map can do justice to the ethnological complexity of this region. The Serbs, Croats and Montenegrins are of the same blood, tho divided by religion and nationality. The annexation by Austria in 1908 of Bosnia and Herzegovina, both racially united to Servia rather than Hungary, destroyed their hopes of joining in one great Servian empire, and this disappointment gave rise to the bitter resentment against the Austrian crown which is now displayed.
It's quite interesting to think that even then, in the US press, Austrohungarian imperialism translated as 'preventing the Great Servian empire'.
> He lived in Belgrade with Serbian author and film-maker Jasmina Tešanović for several years, and married her in 2005.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_Sterling