Exploring the twin sides of his Croatian life
Corner Brook professor Tony Fabijancic releases new book on his travels
Tony Fabijancic has long felt drawn back to his father’s homeland. The Grenfell campus English professor was born in Alberta and has worked in Corner Brook since the 1990s.
Every year, he makes the trip back to the Croatian countryside, where his father has returned and continues to live today.
Fabijancic has documented his experiences in Croatia in a trilogy of books. The latest, Drink in the Summer: A Memoir of Croatia, is the final instalment and was released through Athabasca University Press this August.
This memoir shares his reflections on two contrasting sides of his Croatian experience: the geographical contrast and emotional experience of his visits to his father’s village, Srebrnjak in northern Croatia, and the Adriatic islands in the south.
“There are two worlds that I cover: the North Sea interior, with its green valleys and its plum orchards on the one hand, and on the other, the austere and skeletal karst coast,” he told West Coast Wire.
To Fabijancic, the north feels like home, while the south has always seemed unfamiliar and new. In the north, he was part of a community of family and friends who helped shape the social part of his character; in the south, he felt like an anonymous stranger.
The islands, he says, were a destination of “separation and escape” for him.
The book is also objective and material, with visual descriptions of people and places. He touches on the changes that have occurred in recent years in Srebrnjak, as the peasant lifestyle has disappeared and the village has become a white-collar weekend retreat.
The book also tells the story of how Fabijancic first met his wife.
He stresses the work is literary in quality and feels it combines different writing registers.
“It’s got the confessional nature of a memoir, where the language is more or less straightforward and transparent to the thing it’s describing,” he explained. “But, on the other hand, I use the reticence and mystery of literary fiction, because I feel that readers should sometimes be invited to make up their own minds. I use the journalistic style, academic scholarship and I also include photographs.”
THE PARALLELS
One of the rocky Adriatic islands Fabijancic visited and discussed in the book reminded him of another island that he has made home.
His first impression of the Croatian island of Pag in 1996 mirrored his first encounter with Newfoundland, where he had arrived the previous year on a teaching contract.
In the book, he perceives both Pag and the topography driving through Newfoundland’s Long Range Mountains as examples of Edmund Burke’s concept of the sublime.
“(Burke) uses (the sublime) to distinguish the awesome or inspiring or intimidating, even fearful landscape in comparison to a safe one: pretty meadows, softly undulating hills, gentle valleys, a landscape that seems safe and pliable to human will, unlike the sublime,” Fabijancic explained. The latter describes the “beautiful” and, for him, Srebrnjak is an example of a “beautiful” place in contrast to the sublime of Pag and Newfoundland.
The north side of Pag, meanwhile, is perhaps even more of a “rock” than Newfoundland.
Viewing Pag from the mainland, it struck him as “massive, hostile and empty” and he likened it to a “moonscape.”
Fabijancic also draws a parallel between the declining fishing traditions of the Adriatic islands and Newfoundland.
Beyond that, he hopes Newfoundland readers will appreciate the book’s literary qualities and the window he opens to a life that’s now gone. He hopes readers are entertained and experience sadness and humour.
THE BACKGROUND
Fabijancic’s father escaped the former Yugoslavia in 1964 to avoid military service. He fled by train to France, eventually to Germany and then to Canada. However, he had always felt a pull back to Croatia.
“It’s his drive to always return home and lead us there as well, as a family, that led to me having an interest in this part of the world,” he stated.
Fabijancic has no memories of his first visit to Croatia in the 1960s and 1970s. His first memories really begin during a visit in 1977 at age 11. He has visited Croatia many times since, including Christmas 1992, when the Croatian War of Independence was underway.
Per the preface, the new book started as a scholarly project on cold and warm-water islands but evolved into an exploration of the dual sides of his Croatian experience.
The book is available to purchase and read at aupress. ca.
Fabijancic says there will be a book launch at the Grenfell Campus English department in October. He will also be doing a reading on Oct. 13 as part of the Horseshoe Literary Festival.