THEORY OF RECEPTION AND UNDERSTANDING OF BOSNIAK SUFI LITERATURE

The issue of contemporary reception of Sufi literature of Bosniaks in Oriental language is very important and worth returning to and updating. What does this literature mean to today's Bosnian and Bosniak reader and how should one approach it, read it and transfer its ideas and messages to the present, completely different psychological, emotional and mental environment of the contemporary man, his literary habits and expectations? What is the horizon of expectation of today's reader in the encounter with these texts? How can a contemporary Bosniak or Bosnian lead a dialogue with Hasan Zijaija, Ahmed Talib, or Zekerija Sukeri?

Literary reception theory has indicated the significance of the dialogue between a literary work and the reader. Hans Robert Jauss believed that the reader receives a literary work on the background of the entire system of literature which exists at a given moment of history. The reader compares the text both to similar texts and to texts of the overall literary tradition. The system of literary values in a community builds a certain horizon of expectation in the reader's mind. On the one hand, there is the horizon of the author of the text, and on the other is the horizon of the reader's expectation which a literary work enters encountering the already formed system of conventions, norms and values in the reader's mind. Reception implies response to a work in a given social and cultural community, whereby the literary work itself experiences transformations in the structure of meaning, having in mind that every generation approaches a literary work “with their own vision of the world, their own system of aesthetic and moral values, and with their own critical sensibility” (Lešić, Nova čitanja..., 23-28).

Challenges of contemporary reception and response to Sufi literature were indicated in papers by Muhsin Rizvić, who pointed out that poetics of Bosniaks in Oriental languages opens the spaces of “theoretical reflection on the issue of literary reception in general, i.e. on the communication of poetic experience when a poem is transferred a) from one linguistic-cultural setting to another (factor of space), b) from one time to another (factor of time) and c) from one spiritual group to another spiritual group of the same nation, same geopolitical region, cultural-civilizational space, and the same time (factor of spirit). At the same time, when one looks deeper, a theoretical problem arises – whether it is at all possible for a reader to completely properly receive the poetic experience of the author-poet when, besides all the above, one assumes a different psycho-emotional constitution of the donor and the recipient, different stocks of life experience, nuances in experiencing the expression and its notional and musical-intonational sensations etc. We call it a wealth, layers and depths of experiencing a work of poetry during different temporal approaches to it, or in approaches by different people, from different environments etc. Perhaps it could be better defined – as the relativity of poetic reception, which constitutes the magic of multiple meanings, poly-emotionality, poetic openness, experiential extension and uncompletion of a poem, for example.” (Rizvić, 86).

The questions or, better said, the dilemmas which Muhidin Rizvić indicated in 1977 about the reception, understanding and evaluating Bosniaks' literature in Oriental languages are still waiting for thorough answers. Do messages and meanings of this literature reach and provoke the literary audience of today? In the 1970s, the German school of literary reception positioned the reader rather than the writer in the center of literary thought and the analysis of literary works, since it is the reader who should liberate the meaning of the text. For the reader to be able to do so, it is necessary for him to have certain predispositions, literary knowledge and competences, which today's Bosnian reader certainly lacks in the encounter with these texts. The lack of these predispositions is primarily reflected in a lack of knowledge of the nature and context of the literature which Bosniaks wrote in Oriental languages and the existence of language barriers for a direct encounter with the original text. Wolfgang Iser, one of prominent representatives of German reader-response criticism, claimed that meanings in a literary work require reader's active participation to be realized, but that the reader is always in a way implied in the text as one who should realize its meanings. “Valuable literary works, Iser believed, force the reader to invest a greater effort and concentration to penetrate their complex code, which does not allow an easy, routine 'decoding' (based on recognition) but rather asks the reader to change his usual reading habits, to adjust to the novelty of the text and in this way accept new, previously unsuspected possibilities of literary discourse. Such works, according to Iser, challenge and change beliefs with which the reader approaches reading, question both his usual approach to literature and the way he sees things around him. They force him to adopt a new vision of things and a new language this vision is exposed to.” (Lešić, Nova čitanja.., 50)

It is a fact that literature of Bosniaks in Oriental languages requires an increased reader's effort, a stronger concentration and a change in the usual reading habits. It can rightly be claimed that Sufi literature assumes the implied reader, as stated by Iser. Unlike views of structuralists and poststructuralists, the implied reader of Sufi texts must know the context and notional inspirations of the literature of Sufism.

Today's implied reader of Bosniaks' poetry in Oriental language is one who, besides literary competence, has knowledge of the notional-historical context of the emergence and development of Sufism. The founder of literary reception, Hans Robert Jauss, introduced the term horizon of expectation in literary theory, advocating the view that the meaning of a literary work is realized in the encounter of two horizons, the horizon of reader's expectation and the horizon of the literary work itself. The horizon of expectation of today's literary recipient of the content of Sufi literature in Oriental languages is not at the level which could liberate appropriate meanings and messages in this literature and interpret them. Since, as can be seen from the American branch of this school, it requires sovereign mastery of some strategies and skills to obtain the necessary basis for understanding a literary work which are acquired through education. Stanley Fish, a prominent representative of the American reader-response criticism, believed that a literary work as a whole is a “place of ambiguity” and that, therefore, it fully depends on the way in which the reader understands it and constructs its meaning (Lešić, Suvremena tumačenja..., 489). Instead of the implied reader, he speaks of the reader's position which is, according to him, always found within a completely defined social and cultural situation, i.e. in the community of people who share both the same language and the same literary “code”. According to Fish, each community “develops some interpretive strategies, which are common to all readers, and which guide their individual reactions.” (Lešić, Suvremena tumačenja..., 491) He introduces the term informed reader, which refers to the reader who is a competent speaker of the language out of which the text is built up; is in full possession of “semantic knowledge” (knows grammar, stylistics, word pictures etc.) and has literary competence. “Since they share the same linguistic and literary experiences, and the same 'interpretive strategies', the informed readers will rarely totally diverge in understanding the same literary work.” (Lešić, Suvremena tumačenja..., 491). However, according to Fish, divergence is also legitimate and possible; if they diverge, it is a sign that they belong to different interpretive communities.

Postulates of the reception theory may help in clarifying ways and easier removal of barriers for present study and understanding of poetry of Bosniaks in Oriental languages inspired by Sufism. The appropriate and full reception of this literature in the Bosnian-Bosniak community cannot be expected without its proper transfer into the psycho-emotional world and mind, and into the cultural-artistic bases which make up literary tastes, affinities and competences of the contemporary reader and its consumer. This literature itself will not, nor can it, reveal its “timeless being” to the contemporary Bosnian reader without the reader's effort and willingness to adjust to it, change his habits and shift the horizon of expectation to get properly informed on it and to establish interpretive strategies and interpretive communities in the context of its reception. Effort on its translation, which is an extremely demanding process, is an important step in this direction. According to Derrida, “there is nothing absolutely untranslatable, but also nothing absolutely translatable!” The difficulty of translating is particularly prominent in poetry. “A poem which did not resist translation would not be a poem” (Kapidžić-Osmanagić, 326). Furthermore, Derrida believes that valuable poetry provides a basis for translation by its universal values which should be discovered in it, and these universal values allow transfer between cultures and languages.

References:

• Kapidžić-Osmanagić, Hanifa (2006), “Jacques Derrida i dekonstrukcija”, in: Lešić, Zdenko, Kapidžić-Osmanagić, Hanifa, Katnić-Bakaršić, Marina, Kulenović, Tvrtko, Suvremena tumačenja književnosti, Sarajevo Publishing, Sarajevo.

• Lešić, Zdenko (2013), Nova čitanja:poststrukturalistička čitanka, Buybook, Sarajevo.

• Lešić, Zdenko (2006), “Čitalac kao mjesto gdje se proizvode značenja: Reader-Response Criticism”, in: Lešić, Zdenko, Kapidžić-Osmanagić, Hanifa, Katnić-Bakaršić, Marina, Kulenović, Tvrtko, Suvremena tumačenja književnosti, Sarajevo Publishing, Sarajevo.

• Rizvić, Muhsin (1994), Panorama bošnjačke književnosti, Ljiljan, Sarajevo.