Nase Novine, May 05, 1982

              £6
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93
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Prof. Ivan Dolenc je dugogodlSnji specijalni saradnik.
Stalnoje zaposlen kao predavad stranih jezika u High School
u Toronto. Sposobnost i iskustvo profesionalnog novinara i
publiciste sa kojim je pre mnogo godina doSao u Kanadu iz
rodne Ljubljane, nastavio je da razvija. Cenjen je po
zapaienim publicistidkim i knjilevnim delima, kako na ovom
kontinentu, tako u Jugoslaviji.
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When Louis Adamic's The Bohunks appeared in the July,
1928. issue of American Mercury, the promising young
author could not have anticipated that his words would
disturb Slovene American publicists for more than fifty years
afterwards. For many opponents of Adamic's political
activities during World War II this publication has served as a
vehicle for recruiting other Slovene immigrants against him.
Here it must be emphasized, however, that the original
Englich text of The Bohunks was read by very few Slovene
Americans, partly because it was published in a magazine
unfamiliar to them, but chiefly because at that time very few
among them read or understood English. Moreover, since not
a single editor of the Slovene American newspapers of the
day seemed to dare to publish Adamic's text in Slovene
translation (the first "translation" was published only in
Ljubljana in 1979.), it appears that the interested Slovene
American public divided itself for or against Adamic's views
while faithfully relying solely on the opinions expressed by
this or that reviewer or correspondent in the Slovene
American press. Out of this has emerged the considerable
confusion over the description of The Bohunks as everything
from an "article", "essay", "review", "short story", or
"sketch", to a "satire".
In Vatro Grill's memoires there is a telling description of
the atmosphere of the turbulent weeks following Adamic's
publication: "Something unexpected happened — unexpec-ted
at least to me. In the Slovene American press a violent
storm errupted over the head of this new author. It was
absurd, even utterly hilarious". This and other contemporary
references to Adamic's text open anew the question of why
Adamic's mere five thousand words, printed on seven pages
of an American monthly, precipitated such a deluge of
polemics, which today already exceed its number of lines
several times (only the first "objection" contained over two
thousand words!), and do not appear to have ceased flowing.
With the exception of the first Slovene translation of
Adamic's The Bohunks which, as poor as it is, represents the
first positive step toward an understanding of what took
place in America, all other contemporaty allusions to
Adamic's publication can only further confuse the uniformed
reader. For no one yet has written about The Bohunks by
starting at the beginning — that is, at the text itself. A critical
review of the first polemical articles, which set the tone and
direction of the "storms" over Adamic's head, and an
interpretation of the most recent reaction to its theme have
also been lacking.
Adamic's The Bohunks is written in the form of a
magazine report or reportage, fashionable in the twenties and
thirties in the American monthly press, of which Adamic
produced a great number. Stylistically, it presents a mingling
of the elements of an article with fictional images, or a combination of report and essay. Since it is written
humouristically with not a little satire, it reads easily, often
entertainingly, and also like serious journalism, in the
manner of Adamic's good friend Carey McWilliams, for
instance. In the title the author adopts the costomary ethnic
epithet for all Slavic immigrants, with the exception of the
Russians, which immediately told old stock Americans what
his work was about, without ever using the word anywhere in
an offensive or pejorative sense. The word Bohunk is a
combination of "Bohemian" and "Hunky", which were
well-know- n in the literature of the American Slavs long before
Adamic's arrival on the American scene, and which even
appeared in the writings of Slovenes. To Adamic "Bohunk"
meant norhing more than "greenhorn", or immigrant from
South-Easter- n Europe, and corresponds in his later works to
his use of the terms "foreigner", "foreing-born- ", or "alien". In
his Bohunks Adamic's use of the epithet is also a much
narrower one, describing only members of the often isolated
settlements or ethnic ghettos, Any other interpretation of
Adamic's use of the word has to be excluded, since the writer
was already at this time what Michael Novak has recently
described as a "pluralistic personality", and had entered his
name into the history of American ethnics as one of the first
interpreters and defenders of all "humiliated and injured"
non-Anglo-Sax- on Americans.
The Bohunks is formally divided into four parts. It begins
with a literary treatment of the return of an "Amerikanec" to
his native village, "some peasant who four or five years
before had quietly left for America clad in homespun, and
with a bundle on his back and hair on his face", and now
returned sporting guady clothes, a clean-shave- n face, and a
repertoire of foreing words "impressively meaningless". But
the light satirical touches in the text are directed more at
those at home who give the visitor the oportunity to "floor
them with the oppulence and sophistication he had acquired
in the West Virginia mines or the Pennsylvania steelmills",
than at the poor "plutocrat" himself. The same satirical blows
are aimed at the local "intelligensia", the parish priest, the
schoolteacher and the postmaster, who considered these
returned Americans "an unwholesome influence upon the
community". Adamic continues: "It appered that America
worked in them a deplorable change... it deprived them of
their native respect for people of higher callings. Thus
America corrupted them, made them arrogant, perverse,
vulgar, and worse..." (p. 318).
Following Adamic's effective presentation of the type of
immigrant his reportage concerns, we are provided with an
anecdotal and partly autobiographical account of the
anti-Americ- an propaganda circulated in Slovenia, in newspa-pers,
in books such as New Ameriko! (Do Not Go to
America!), and from the pulpit, containing the message:
"...so far as its influence on our good peasantry and our
great, although microscopic, nation in general was
concerned, America was a cruel, evil place. True, a great deal
of money came from it, but... was it worth the price? America
broke and mangled bodies, defiled souls, mad? men
irreligious, corrupted their charming dialects and ways, and
alienated them from their homeland" (p. 318). The
introduction to The Bohunks ends, however, with the
conclusion that, in spite of such propaganda, "during the
quarter of a century immediately preceding the World War,
America received great hordes of Bohunks, and made use of
them" (310). Throughout this first part Adamic's sympathies
are clearly on the side of his "Bohunks"; he treats critically
only those who have made them what they are; and, finally,
he aims at the "unrighteous rule of the Austrian oligarchy"
and the Yugoslav nationalists", including their supporters
among our own masses.
In the second part the author, again semi-autobiographica-- lly,
turns to the image of America in the mind of the
immigrant, to Adamic himself America appeared to be a
"crazy place", whose "turmoil" bewildered the immigrants
upon their arrival — "from the most intelligent ones down to
the densest dunce". Then Adamic provides us with the most
essential clue for understanding these immigrants later on by
remarking that their first urgency was to seek out their
countrymen. We are given further glimpses into the new life
of the "poor Bohunks", as Adamic realistically recounts their
difficulty (although "to them not the most important") in
making native-bor- n Americans and other alliens understand
who they were, for many unclear on the point themselves. '
The Slovene immigrant was "Austrian", "Krainer" or Q