SPRING IN THE CITY

MIŠO MARIĆ, VLASTA KNEZOVIĆ AND PERO ZUBAC, NEVESINJE

story, and then that love story became a term for Mostar and Mostar’s singing. Interestingly, there was nothing there. There were some things, but they didn’t cross the regional ramp…” Duško in typical Duško style!

You wrote the love poem Mostar Rains in 1965, out of boredom, with no inkling that it would make you famous. While you were waiting for your friend and fellow poet, Rade Tomić, to write his poem on the premises of the then Youth Organisation in Novi Sad, you threaded a sheet of paper into a typewriter and wrote those famous verses in one go?

It was a September evening. I didn’t have indigo and I typed it in one copy. And that night I posted it to Zvonimir Golob, the editor of Telegram in Zagreb. He published it under the name Perica Zubac, which was how I signed it; that’s what everyone in Nevesinje called me, on 8th October, 1965. If that letter had gone astray, if Zvonimir had forgotten it, that poem would not exist. He told me once, long ago, that he would include it in his anthology of world poetry, which he unfortunately didn’t manage to finish and publish during his lifetime.

In my memory, the snows of Nevesinje were a brighter fascination than the rains of Mostar, and their whiteness is described in many of my poems, especially those intended for children

Although that legendary poem won over the sympathies of critics and readers, you didn’t include it in your first book of poetry. You only did so at the insistence of your then professor at the Faculty of Philosophy, Dr Draško Ređep?

Draško Ređep wrote about me several times, very affirmatively and beautifully, and for one article about me, entitled “Breath of Youth” and published in Politika, he was awarded the Milan Bogdanović Award, the top prize for literary criticism in our country. His last essay about me is included in his selection “The Most Beautiful Poems of Pero Zubac”, published by Belgrade’s Prosveta in 2004. I most like this passage from his preface: “… And finally something very, very personal. In the half-light of the former building of the Faculty of Philosophy in Novi Sad’s Njegoševa Street, I was approached by a young man in a long coat, resembling Prince Myshkin, absolutely absent, to be read as dedicated, and asked me to agree to his seminar paper on Dis. Who knows, maybe it was because of that purple and Novi Sad twilight that the new Dis visited me. I never asked if Zubac wrote that seminar paper on the poet of murk, riddles and secrets. But, in essence, the overall solution of this lyricist, so aloof, so dedicated, was that supposed seminar paper. Students have long since been our modern classics.” (Draško was no longer at the faculty, and I published the paper in two instalments in Novi Sad student newspaper INDEX)

Mostar Rains’ Svetlana was an intriguing character. Everyone wanted to know the identity of this girl, who still makes this poem magical. The poet initially said that Svetlana does not exist, then later revealed that Svetlana is a non-existent girl who was woven into the poem on the basis of the characteristics of Mirjana Šimić from Mostar, Ljiljana Njanje Canić from Belgrade, Vera Steiner from Osijek and Dragana Vajdić from Novi Sad, who later became your wife.

The answer is in your question. Of those four golden girls from my early youth, I composed Svetlana. All “platonic” loves.

Irina Chivilikhina’s Russian translation of Mostar Rains was published in Moscow magazine Robotnica (1988), which had a circulation of 19.75 million copies. Your poems can also be found on other Russian sites and with “Orwell”, alongside Njegoš and Goran Kovačić. Mostar Rains was also published on a Finnish website, alongside two Desanka Maksimović poems.

The internet extended the literary life of Mostar Rains, multiplying it a thousand times, and it has been translated into 20 world languages. Belgrade publisher Admiral Books published the jubilee edition in 2015, in thirteen languages, then another translation was published in Polish, then in Hungarian, Spanish, German, and the most recent, from 2019, in Bulgarian.

You didn’t visit Mostar for a long time. You

only returned to the city on the Neretva in 2005, after a decade and a half away, with the book Return to Mostar. That was unforgettable for you and for guests and visitors?

As noted by my friend Milan Gutić, who drove me there and followed me throughout my stay in Mostar: “Unrepeatable. Now, and never again like this”. The evening was beautified by the Mostar Rains Ensemble: Mišo Marić, Šerif Aljić, Kemal Monteno, the Planjanin brothers… Poetry lovers from both banks of the river flocked to the National Theatre.

That success was repeated at the book’s promotions in Sarajevo and Banja Luka. Was that the reason for you to continue writing that book?

In Sarajevo, Gradimir Gojer, my dear friend and then President of the BiH Writers, said in his welcome address that my arrival in Mostar and Sarajevo meant more to the citizens of BosniaHerzegovina than all the visits of politicians from around the world and the region combined. And Raif Dizdarević confirmed that writing in Oslobođenje: “I had dinner with Pero and Slavko Pervan, but the magic ended with Pero’s return to Novi Sad”.

You didn’t move to Novi Sad with the intention of staying there, yet you’ve lived in that city with your family since 1963?

I came and stayed. I never regretted that or had a desire to change the city where I live.

Novi Sad is the city of your past and present. You have wonderful sons, Vladimir and Miloš, and grandchildren, Milena and Mey, to whom you are particularly attached. That is joy, while there is also sadness. Many of your nearest and dearest have long since departed to join the infinite. Apart from your wife Dragana, they include Miroslav Antić, Duško Trifunović et al?

My family: Nataša and Vladimir, Dragana, Miloš, Milena and Mej and I are like one being. So different, fortunately, and so close, fortunately. We protect one another.

It is becoming increasingly clear to me that my concerns over my health, the dream of longevity, is not about hope that I will add something to my artistic name, but rather that I will spend longer in the embrace of the family and watch my grandchildren, Milena and Mej, beautify and extend my life.

Many of my friends are on the “other shore”, together with my Dragana. In my dreams I most

WITH FAMILY

I received the “Lenka’s Ring” award for the most beautiful love poem (“Defence of Memory”), which also preserves within it for eternity Smiljana Anja Župunski, an intelligent and beautiful girl

often encounter Antić, my stepbrothers, my Duško and Dragomir Brajković, an old friend and generational sibling, and everyone in those dreams is happier and more relaxed than they were in our life, which is not at all easy and as bright.

It’s tough to list all the awards that you’ve received. Could you single out some of them without doing harm?

With the latest three: the ‘Biblios Lifetime Achievement Award’, the ‘Sretenje Order of the Second Degree for Services to the Republic of Serbia and its Citizens in Literature, Especially Poetry’, and the Award of Banja Luka’s Children’s Kingdom Festival, ‘Prince of the Children’s Empire’. The total number is three more than the number of years I’ve lived.

Do you still write and, if so, what?

After the children’s poetry book Poems for Milena, for which I received the province’s highest award for children, ‘Sima Cucić’, I’m transposing the manuscript of the book DEDOLOVKA - poetry book for Mej, and I’ve submitted a book of poems from recent years, entitled “My sister – loneliness”, to Vesna Goldsworthy to write me a foreword, and she was glad that we will “be together in one book”. It will be published by my new precious publisher, Tomica Karadžić, owner of Grafoprint from Gornji Milanovac, who prior to the new year published a wonderful edition of the poetry book Defence of Memory, along with Miloš’s book of selected and new poems “Returnees to Love” and Miloš’s selection of Duško Trifunović’s poems, “Save the one I love for me”. Miloš is very much following in his father’s footsteps. And that makes me feel very proud.