Србија - национална ревија, специјално издање, Москва, енглески by Aleksandar Ćosić

Year XIII • special edition, 2019 • free copy www.nacionalnarevija.com

MINISTRY OF CULTURE AND INFORMATION OF SERBIA

P R O L O G U E

Publisher “Princip Pres” Cetinjska 6, 11000 Belgrade Tel.: +381 (11) 322 70 34, 32 30 447 www.nacionalnarevija.com princip.press@gmail.com Director and Editor-in-Chief Mišo Vujović Editor Branislav Matić Technical Editor Aleksandar Ćosić Photography Editor Dragan Bosnić Header and cover design Jovan Željko Rajačić

AT THE MOSCOW INTERNATIONAL BOOK FAIR

Through All Times S

ometimes it seems that the encounter of Serbian and Russian culture is like an encounter of a man with himself. Eternal, neverending and always new. The 2019 Moscow International Book Fair renews that feeling in us. Serbia and Srpska will again present their literature, publishing and culture there this year. It will be marked by a series of significant anniversaries of Serbian culture. “It has been 90 years since the birth and 10 years since the death of Milorad Pavić (1929–2009), 90 years since the birth of Aleksandar Popović (1929– 1996), 30 years since the death of Danilo Kiš (1935–1989), 70 years since the death of Rastko Petrović (1898–1949), 120 years since the birth of Rade Drainac (1899–1943)... It is the 100th anniversary of the publication of Miloš Crnjanski’s milestone collection of poems Lyrics of Ithaca.” The 800th anniversary of the independence of the Serbian Orthodox Church, as well as the 810th anniversary of the emergence of the Studenica Typikon, will have a special place. This important manuscript of Saint Sava, the first Serbian archbishop, is embedded in the foundations of the Serbian Church, but is also “a work equally important for the development of the Serbian language, alphabet and law”. National Review, once again with its special issue, as well as a number of other representative issues, will be at the stand of its country in Moscow. We have explored how Russia is perceived in Serbian literature and Serbia in Russian. We have reminded of Lazar Prizrenac, a mysterious monk-scholar from the time of the Serbian despotate, who made the first mechanical clock in imperial Russia in 1404. From the tower in the Moscow Kremlin, this clock, one of the first ten in Europe, has been measuring the time of the Slavic empire for more than two centuries. We talked with the writers Dragan Jovanović Danilov (from Serbia) and Berislav Blagojević (from Srpska)... Everything we have done will be reflected in your eyes. By them we will know if we have succeeded. 

Associates Milovan Vitezović, jerej Jovan Plamenac, Bojan Mandić, Dragan Lakićević, Nebojša Jevrić, Olga Vukadinović, Jovo Bajić, Dejan Bulajić, Petar Milatović, Dejan Đorić, Đorđe Srbulović, Mihail Kulačić, Milena Z. Bogavac, Vojislav Filipović, Saša Šarković, Zoran Plavšić, Hristina Plamenac, Dragana Barjaktarević, Dušica Milanović Translated by Sandra Gagić & “Globe Translations” Marketing Mirko Vujović Secretariat and placement Dragana Dimitrijević, Milenko Vasilić Print “Portal”, Belgrade Office for Srpska “Princip Pres RS” Nikole Pašića 1, 78000 Banjaluka Tel/Fax: +387 (51) 304 360 Office for Australia “Princip Press Australia PTY LTD”, 5 Germain Crt, Keilor Downs, 3038 VIC

Cover page: Lazar the Serb and Russian time (based on Vladan Zdravković Avakum’s illustration) Magazine registered in the Register of Public Media of the Republic Serbia, no. NV000385

ISSN 1452-8371 = Serbia - National Review COBISS.SR-ID 139201804

F O U N D A T I O N S

EIGHT CENTURIES AND ONE DECADE SINCE THE APPEARANCE OF THE STUDENICA TYPICON OF ST. SAVA

Earthly Angel, Heavenly Man

This extraordinary document is part of the greatest endeavor in the Serbian Christian history, visionary and inspired by God. The Serbian church and state were established in that endeavor, as well as the golden Middle Ages and all the centuries that will follow “until the end of the world”. On the occasion of the 800th anniversary of the Serbian Orthodox Church independence, the Monastery of Studenica published a new representative edition of the Typicon in four languages, cognitively probably the most comprehensive one up to now

t is one of the books built into the foundations. The foundations of the church, state, monastic community, God-bearing personality. The foundations of other and different books that will be appearing in the centuries to come.

There is abundant scientific literature, in paper and electronic libraries, about the appearance and significance of the Studenica Typicon or Rules of St. Sava 810 years ago. It is not our intention to paraphrase or “digest”, in accordance with the

 St. Sava, part of the fresco, King’s Church in Studenica, 1313–1314

F O U N D A T I O N S  Hermitage in Studenica: This is where St. Sava likely made the last revision of the Studenica Typicon in 1208

spirit of easiness of our times. On the occasion of the important anniversary of this document, together with the 800th anniversary of the Serbian Orthodox Church independence, we merely wish to remind of some significant elements in those ancient and far-reaching endeavors. Observing the stated anniversaries, the Monastery of Studenica published a new representative edition of the Typicon in 2018, in four languages (Serbo-Slavic, contemporary Serbian, Russian, English), cognitively probably the most comprehensive one up to now. EDIFICE “The idea of the unity of Serbian lands and their unification into a powerful state in the Balkans is certainly as old as the first Serbian states origins. The possibility of realizing such a complex idea was first recognized by the Great Prince of Raška Stefan Nemanja, who understood the symphony of spiritual and secular powers in the Byzantine establishment of the state. This should be viewed through the departure of Nemanja’s third son Rastko, begged from God, to Mt. Athos, where he became monk Sava, as well as Nemanja’s ceding of the throne to his middle son Stefan, son-in-law of then Byzantine Emperor Alexios Angelos, followed by Nemanja taking a monastic vow. Nothing in their actions was accidental. There was a clear vision, there was a concrete plan”, writes Milovan Vitezović, writer, editor of the important monograph St. Sava in the Russian Imperial Annals, author of the text about St. Sava in the booklet Great Serbian Visionaries (“Great Vision of the One Begged from God”). “Raising the Serbian monastery of Chilandar in Mt. Athos ‘in the name of the father and sons’ (Simeon/Nemanja, Stefan and Sava/Rastko) and taking Byzantine Emperor Alexios Angelos as co-founder, set the foundation of Serbian spiritual independence, because Sava wrote the Chilandar Typicon, with the approval of the emperor co-founder, looking up to the Monastery of Theotokos Evergetis Typicon, which gave this imperial monastery in Constantinople complete independence. Thus, with the emperor’s approval, Chilandar became an independent imperial monastery as well, with the right to have a typicon like the one of Evergetis, neither under control of Mt. Athos prior nor the Ecumenical Patriarch, just the

Emperor, represented among the founders with a gifted golden imperial scepter.” Written based on the Chilandar Typicon – continues Vitezović – Sava’s Studenica Typicon enabled independent Studenica to gain property throughout the Serbian lands and raise Orthodox churches and monasteries. The clergy and clerics prepared for holding services in Serbo-Slavic language in Chilandar. “Thus the Serbian Orthodox Church was first created and then proclaimed independent. Ecumenical Patriarch Mihailo Saraten ordained Archimandrite of Studenica Sava Nemanjić the first archbishop of the Orthodox Serbian Church on Palm Sunday of 1219, thus granting Serbian archpriests the

right to elect their archbishops, which enabled the Serbian archbishop, according to the symphony, to crown Serbian kings with a Serbian crown.” The same source further states: Sava established the archiepiscopal and royal right of Serbs in his Nomocanon (Code), with selections from the most important rules from Prochiron, Vasillicos and Jus tinian’s Laws, translated, interpreted and adapted for Serbs. After legalizing the Serbian church and state, during his two long journeys, Archbishop Sava provided recognitions of other monarchs as well (two emperors, three kaisars, one king and one kalif) and the highest ecclesiastical officials. Such recognitions were confirmed with a

Serbian edifice in heavenly Jerusalem. After purchasing from Muslims the house of John the Evangelist, where the Last Supper took place in the upper room and the New Testament was established, and granting the house to the Patriarchate of Jerusalem, Sava gained the right to raise a Serbian church celebrating John the Evangelist next to the house in Zion. Only foundations of the Serbian church are preserved today, located exactly above David’s tomb crypt. “Serbian spiritual and state concepts, later traditional norms, postulates of spiritual honor, legal and moral features of the Serbian nation, were all derived from such activities and theological postulates of Sava Nemanjić.”

F O U N D A T I O N S

FIRST FRUITS “With the Studenica Typicon and accompanying Hagiography of St. Simeon, St. Sava established the bases of Serbian canonic-legal and heortological-hymno graphic literature”, indicates professor Maja Anđelković, PhD, co-editor of the new edition of the Typicon (together with Archimandrite Tihon Rakićević, PhD, prior of Studenica). “The significance of the Studen ica Typicon shouldn’t be perceived only in the context of establishing the monastic structure, but also in the context of concrete procedures that preceded the autocephality of the Serbian Orthodox Church

in 1219. At the same time, its significance for the Serbian state should not be neglected either. (…) The Studenica Typicon has an important role from the aspect of philology as well, since, besides its significant linguistic and style features, it is the first typicon with the original word ‘obraznik’ in its title (liturgical rules) (Obraznik of St. Sava of Serbia).” Science has no doubts: the basis for both Chilandar and the Studenica typicons was the Evergetis Typicon. St. Sava made the last revisions of the Chilandar Typicon after Simeon’s death in Mt. Athos (1199/1200). The Studenica Typicon was finalized after the transfer of St. Simeon’s

prior, as well as to protect Studenica – are not only important canonic-legal, but also civil-legal elements, testimony about the relations of ecclesiastical and civil authorities”, states professor Anđelković. “The most extensive novelty is the Hagiography of St. Simeon, written as the first chapter of the Studenica Typicon. Unlike the short hagiography in the Chilandar Typicon, reduced to the most important events from Simeon’s arrival to Mt. Athos to his death (in Letter 2 and Letter 3), whose function was mainly to ‘fixate the day of remembrance of the holy one’, Sava wrote a comprehensive hagiography for the Studenica Typicon, covering the entire life of Simeon Nemanja. This hagiography, as we have already emphasized, is the basis of Serbian heortological-hymnographic literature, ‘the first work of Sava written with expressive literary features’. We’d also add that certain parts of other chapters of the Studenica Typicon also have literary and expressive rhetorical features. Considering the time of creation and characteristics of Sava’s work, the stand of (Dimitrije) Bogdanović that St. Sava is the ‘founder of independent XIII century Serbian literature’ is entirely justified.”

 Studenica Monastery, endowment of St. Simeon the Myrrh-streamer (Stefan Nemanja), XII century

WRITING DOWN

relics from Chilandar to Studenica (1207), before “proclaiming Simeon Nemanja the new Myrrh-streamer” (1210). It was apparently in 1208, in Sava’s hermitage in Studenica. “Sava’s revisions while writing the Stu denica Typicon were undoubtedly bigger and, we’d say more important than the ones in the Chilandar Typicon. From the canonic-legal aspect, we underline the new essential provision about appointing the archimandrite as prior of Studenica. Furthermore, defining the status of Studenica in relation to other monasteries, the order to the state monarch to be present at and participate in the election of the

The new edition of the Studenica Typi con was made based on Abercius’ copy from 1619, made in St. Sava’s hermitage in Studenica, where the original text was created 410 years ago, exactly in the middle between Sava’s and our time. (The original manuscripts of the Chilandar and Studen ica Typicon were not preserved, or at least haven’t been discovered.) Abercius’ copy is kept in the Studenica Monastery Rulers’ Biographies manuscript, in Šafarik’s collection in the National Museum Library in Prague. Finalizing his hierosophic effort exactly 400 years ago, writer Abercius states: “This typicon, ‘obraznik’ of St. Sava of Serbia, was copied in the year of 7127 [1619] in the cave of St. Sava, hermitage, and was before us written by the hand of St. Sava in the year of 6708 [1200], when Mr. Simeon passed away. And so that no one would make things difficult or turn them round, because many words in this nomocanon are ordinary, but very useful. Due to that,

F O U N D A T I O N S

St. [Sava] gave orders to read it at the beginning of each month, clearly, as if appointing servants. We all should not forget the love of the Holy one, knowing that he will be our judge, just like the apostles will be to the twelfth generation of Israel, while other nations will not be judged. Witness to that is St. Nikon, because this Holy one is our apostle. Lord, pour prayers on us, because he prays for us as well! Wrote during the time of prior Teophil.” While rereading the Obraznik of St. Sava,  Paja Jovanović: in a wonderful new edition, enchanted by “St. Sava the beauty and depth of the voice and the Reconciling His language, we wrote down many sentences Quarrelling from it. We will share a few with our reader, Brothers”, oil on pouring as much as it can hold. canvas, first decade “Since who doesn’t love his brother of the XX century doesn’t love God. God is love. Thus, who  Seal with the signature of St. Sava

Team The edition “St. Sava: Studenica Typicon” is a result of the scientific project managed by professor Maja Anđelković, PhD and Archimandrite Tihon Rakićević, PhD. The project was financed by the Serbian Ministry of Justice (Department for Cooperation with Churches and Religious Communities) and Ministry of Culture and Information. Its printing was supported by the “Mihailo Pupin” Institute in Belgrade. The National Museum in Prague ceded the scans of Abercius’ copy of the manuscript from 1619. The book was edited by the managers of the scientific project, while the editorial board, besides them, included Nada Milošević Đorđević, academician, professor Vladimir Vukašinović, PhD, and professor Svetlana Tomin, PhD. The text was translated by professor Maja Anđelković, PhD (from Serbo-Slavic), associate professor Jasmina Teodorović, PhD (into English), Svetlana Luganska (into Russian). Professor Vladimir Ranković dealt with the visual artistic part, and it was printed in “Digital Pres” in Kragujevac.

loves God should love his brother. Since the apostles learnt all the rules about it, martyrs were married and prophets were hanging.” “Respect the Lord in your righteous efforts and give the first of your righteous fruits to him, so that your barns would be full with wheat and your wines pouring from your taps.” “Sons, do not become weak from God’s punishment and do not become weak from his scolding. Since God scolds the ones he loves, he beats every son he accepts. Blessed is the man who finds wisdom and the mortal who sees it. Since it is better to purchase it than to find hiding places for silver and gold, whereas it is more expensive than valuable stones.” “Think good before God and the people. Trust God with all your heart and do not praise with your wisdom.” “My sweet child… watch out for my words… keep them in your heart… And watch your heart with each word you keep, because they are the origins of life. Detach yourself from sharp mouths and shrug off insulting lips. Your eyes should watch straight and your eyebrows should express what is righteous. Do not turn either right or left, because God knows the paths to the right, while those going to the left are corrupted. You, however, learn what is right and walk in peace.” “Do not mix with the mindless ones. Ask for wisdom in order to have a long life. (…) Since the one who reproves the evil will receive boredom and the one who reproves the devil will deny himself. Do not criticize the evil, because they will hate you. Criticize a wise man, and he will love you. Tell a wise man his faults and he will become wiser, tell a lesson to a righteous one and he will continue accepting them. The beginning of wisdom is the fear of God, advice of the holy ones is reason, and understanding rules is a thought of good. Since this good custom will make you live long and extend the years of your life.” “Have love among you! May the anger of God swallow those who draw away from my orders and their entire seed!” “May our mind be in God, in the heavenly scenes, in the beauties of paradise, in the eternal dwellings, in angel choruses, in the life on the other side. (...)” 

V I S I O N A R I E S Moscow in the XV century

A BRIEF HISTORY OF LAZAR THE SERB, THE MYSTERIOUS SCIENTIST FROM THE XV CENTURY

The First Tamer of Russian Time

One of the first ten mechanical public clocks in medieval Europe, the one placed on a tall tower by the Annunciation Church in the Moscow Kremlin, which announced the time of the Slavic empire for two hundred and seventeen years, is the work of a monk from Mount Athos and Prizren, member of the “24 Good Men” organization, a society of supreme knowledge, whose patron was the holy sovereign Stefan Lazarević By: Petar Branov  Lazar of Chi landar (Vladan Zdravković Ava kum’s illustration, source “Politikin zabavnik”)

t was truly a miracle unlike any other. Instead of a live man with a hammer on top of the church bell tower, time was recorded by a strange mechanical device. And not only during the day, but also by night, and not only full hours, but also quarters of hours. The Moscow citizens and their guests thereby had an opportunity to, from a distance, know the time

for the following 217 years. Most of them didn’t know whose hands made the clock and how that wonder came to the famous Kremlin. It happened in 1404 after Christ, or in the 6912th year from the genesis. The prince of the young Moscow principality, Vasily I, son of Dimitri of Don, wanted to mark his reign by building the first public mechani-

V I S I O N A R I E S

The Thing Similar to Man The Nikonian Chronicle from the XVI century, one the most reliable guides through the history of Moscow, describes the work of Lazar the Serb: “In the summer of 6912 (1404) the great prince (Vasily the First) wished for a clock and placed it on top of his palace by the Holy Annunciation Church. This clock is called an hour-measurer and each (full) hour, a hammer hits a bell, measuring and counting hours of day and night; it wasn’t a man who hit the bell but the thing similar to man, self-tolling and self-moving, miraculously beautiful somehow, created by human sharp-wittedness, full of imagination and full of wisdom. The craftsman and artist who made this was a monk who came from Mount Athos, a Serb named Lazar, and the price of this was 150 rubles…”

cal clock in Russia, similar to not more than ten ones that already kept track of time in Europe. Patriarch Cyprian also joined the idea and soon monk Lazar arrived to the city on the Moscow river. Lazar the Serb, or Lazar of Chilandar, as the scarce texts preserved from those times call him. TOGETHER WITH RUBLOV Lazar first built a tower behind the Church of Holy Annunciation, up to the height of the church bells, so that the future clock would have an appropriate place and significance. “An artist and artificer in everything”, as the chronicle writer describes him in a short note from the Niko nian Chronicle, he did need to have many skills. He could hardly be able to erect such a tower without complete knowledge of Heron’s metrics. He couldn’t make a clock with eight cogwheels without using Archimedes’ science, since the cogwheels, unlike the bells which are cast, had to be unfettered. Therefore, he had to know everything about the so-called inscribed and escribed polygons in the given circle, since it was necessary to determine the exact values for eight different polygons for cogwheels. He had really nice company in his work. While Lazar of Chilandar was building the tower and clock, the Annunciation Church was painted by Andrei

Rublov himself, with brothers Prohor and Theofan the Greek. Thanks to a miniature from the XVI century, picturing Lazar handing over his just finished piece to the great prince, the clock which entered the history of chronometry can be pretty credibly reconstructed. Its Byzantine-blue clock face can be clearly seen, where hours (from 1 to 12) are marked with Church-Slavic numbers: az (one), buki (two), vjedi (three)… The clock face was movable, while the single hand was still… One can also see three weights which initiated the hammers for striking (the bells) quarters and full hours. It was a true rarity, since both the citizens and the craftsmen themselves were satisfied by the announcements of only full hours. In the Middle Ages, time was measured in a different way, slowly, almost epically. Lazar’s wonder also had a device common at the time for showing the phases of the moon. And the written text states that one of the hammers was in the hand of a human figure whose swings marked hours. A similar figure on the clock can be seen today on the St. Mark’s Church in Venice, created long after the one in the Moscow Kremlin. We will also mention the fact that the clock cost 150 rubles, a fabulous amount at the time. According to a source, Lazar the Serb received the same amount for his work. For 217 years, this clock constantly tamed time, and then a craftsman from England replaced it with a new one of similar type. That one was later destroyed in a fire after the earthquake, and was soon replaced with a third one, which was, finally, equipped with the, up to recently common, Galilei-Huygens pendulum… It is important for this story to ascertain, or at least anticipate, who that Lazar is and where he came from, and how he gained the knowledge he so skillfully applied in the heart of Russia. PLATO IN PRIZREN Many sources indicate that Lazar, and his watchmaker skills, are a result of a long and successful work of the Prizren watchmaker school from the XIV century, therefore he is often mentioned as “Lazar of Prizren”. The famous polihistor (according to Vujaklija’s dictionary, a scientist who mastered the entire knowledge of his time) Theodor Metohit also used to live in that

imperial city and important crossing of commercial roads. He wrote and taught Euclid’s axioms, passing on the science of the Constantinople universities. Those who know therefore believe that Lazar himself was also an educated polihistor, “since he obviously carried within him the Orthodox, the universal, which lead to the heliocentric system model”. In medieval Serbia, the monks unselfishly used to pass on knowledge in many monasteries, greatly acknowledging the messages of the past. After all, there is a reason why Plato was painted on the wall of the Church of Our Lady of Ljeviš (in Prizren, of course), in the parvis. His face is also in Žiča, as well as paintings of many other Greek philosophers and mathematicians. All those whose knowledge was useful. Besides, Lazar was the contemporary of sovereign Stefan Lazarević, a very educated ruler and dear guest of many European courts. From his capital city of Belgrade, as testified by Wolfgang Rech’s woodcut from 1521, bells from the tower clock “could be heard from a distance of a day of walking”. And one copperplate engraving, created at the time when the Austrians liberated a part of Serbia from the Turks for a short while (1683-1699), shows a detailed design of the Studenica monastery. One can see sixteen churches, a mill, also a tower

with a mechanical clock, and a sundial on the southern side of the Church of Virgin Mary, the first sundial in the Slavic world. A devastating earthquake destroyed the tower and the mechanical clock on it, while the sundial, even today when the skies are clear, moves the shadow. So, monk Lazar did have what to learn and where. He was also called Lazar of Chilandar, and it is possible that he rushed to Moscow from Mount Athos. There is a Russian Monastery of St. Panteleimon on Mount Athos, which was always very close to the Serbian lavra and which was often richly gifted by Serbian monarchs, especially emperor Dušan. That is how the rumors about “the artist and artificer in everything” could have reached the chilly court of the Moscow prince… It is also possible that, like many others, he also started towards the north before the Turkish invasion of Serbia, searching for a safer refuge, where his knowledge and skills would be useful and where he will be free to confess his faith… A lot is unknown about that time, especially about the life and work of Lazar of Prizren, but it is certain that his mechanical public clock on the Moscow Kremlin is only one of the indicators of the knowledge and skills medieval Serbia had and generously offered to the world.

 A present view of the Moscow Kremlin and its towers

C O N N E C T I O N S

RUSSIA IN SERBIAN LITERATURE: BETWEEN GREAT DREAM AND PAINFUL REALISM

Foreboding through Old Curtains In the past two centuries, it is the works with Russian themes that best embodied some of the most important themes of Serbian literature: the enlightenment (Orfelin and Dositej), the destruction of the epic world (Nјegoš), 20th century as murky times (Vasić), migrations and fate of immigration (Crnjanski and Petković), the playful restoration of myth (Pavić), demystification of ideology (Kiš), the fate of the repetition of history (Drašković), the fate of the Eastern European artists in the 20th century (Ognjenović) or melancholic irony of the myth (Toholј)... What we have in common are “our roots, our God, our Tatars, and our people who do not like us”, says a heroine

By: Mladen Vesković

t is a commonplace to say that Russian and Serbian culture and literature are close, but as always when it comes to commonplaces, they are more concealing than revealing, although they start from the principally correct assumptions. It is especially evident if we take a closer look at the question of the image of Russia and Russian themes in Serbian litera-

ture. At first, as a consequence of the echo of the frequently repeated statement of our closeness, there seems to be a number of examples that show permeation and understanding, while actually this is not the case. Russian themes have been present in Serbian literature since relatively recently, and the works that address them are not so numerous. But they are extremely high

quality, some of them are actually crucial for the new Serbian literature, because they were written by some of the best Serbian writers. But let’s start at the beginning. The image of Russia, which is still primarily present today in Serbian culture and the general public, begins to take shape in the historical sense relatively late (as opposed to, for example, the historical image of the Turks, Austrians / Germans, Venetians, etc.), only during the 18th century, while before that we can only talk about sporadic sources. After the first and second migration of the Serbs to Hungary, they came geographically closer to Russia for the first time, just at the time of the great transformation of the Russian state, which is entering the European and world historical scene with large steps and positioning itself as one of the world’s leading powers of that time. This set of circumstances will be decisive for the shaping of the image of Russia, which will be present until our time both in our culture and our public. Very soon after the first migration of the Serbs to the territory under the authority of the Habsburg Monarchy (1690), Patriarch Arsenije III Čarnojević succeeds to meet in Vienna with the Russian Emperor Peter the Great who was, during 1697/98, traveling through Europe. On that occasion, he complained about the difficult position of Orthodox Serbs in Hungary. Later, in a letter written by Patriarch Arsenije to Peter the Great on 29 October 1705, he again complains about the difficult position of the Serbian people, which is compares with the position of the Jews in Egyptian slavery and begs the emperor to assume the role of Moses and liberate the Serbs from slavery. Colonel Pantelejmon Božić, a renowned Serbian officer from Titel, one of the first settlers in Russia, wrote in 1709 about the reputation that Peter the Great had among the Serbs in Hungary, and says that they, having no emperor on their own, have God in heaven and the blessed Emperor Peter on earth. Such an attitude toward the Russian ruler and the state will also create a church-political problem for the Serbs in the Habsburg monarchy, which will remain open for the next hundred years and more. Namely, after the arrival of the first Russian teachers in Sremski Karlovci (Maksim Suvorov 1725 from Moscow and Emanuel Kozachinski with a group of professors from Kiev in 1733) many religious books

are taken over, and with them a series of prayer songs mentioning the (Russian) ruler. Although the archbishop’s duty was to pray for sovereign of his state, for the Serbian clergy it became a problem, because the Habsburg ruler was a Catholic. That is why the cult of the Russian rulers is growing among the Serbian clergy, primarily Peter the Great and Katarina II, and during the liturgy they mention the Russian Ruling House, and only then the Austrian ruler, patriarch and archbishops. When the Metropolitan of Mojsije Petrović 1718 asks Peter the Great for help, he says that the Serbs at the liturgy mention him secretly, because he is the God’s emissary on earth and protector of Orthodox faith, and repeats like Patriarch Arsenije before him that for the Serbs Peter is the second Moses and asks him to lead them out from the Egypt of ignorance.

 Mikhailovsky Square (Art Square) and Mikhailovsky Palace in St. Petersburg, XIX century

CLOSENESS AND MISCONCEPTIONS ABOUT THE LANGUAGE The next historical-literary mention of Russia we find in the work of Bishop Vasilije Petrović, A Short History of Mon tenegro, which he printed in Petrograd in 1754 (where he will also die and be buried in 1766). In the second part of this book, the bishop writes about the defense of the Montenegrins from the Turks, but also about the relations between Russia and Montenegro. Although this book is of little factual relevance, it nevertheless conveys the intention to be closer to Russia and under its protection in every way. The first significant work of a Serbian author dedicated to Russia will be The History of the Life and Famous Works of the Great Lord Peter I the Great the Emperor of All Rus sia, which was printed in Venice in 1772 by Zaharije Orfelin. (The book will be translated into Russian only two years later) Although in Europe at that time many biographies of the famous Russian emperor had been published

 Gospel, Kremlin Armory, Moscow Kremlin

C O N N E C T I O N S

 Bishop Vasilije Petrović (1709–1766) Jovan Rajić (1726–1801) Vuk Karadžić (1787–1864)

in almost all languages, it is important to emphasize that Orfelin’s book is the first Peter’s biography published in a Slavic language. The author belonged to the generation that learned from Russian textbooks and Russian teachers of the 1730s, which certainly contributed to his decision to write a biography of the Russian ruler. An additional motive was Orfelin’s conviction that the Russian and Serbian languages are quite similar and that the two peoples have the same faith, therefore he thought that the life and customs of the two nations are so similar that writing about one he actually speaks about the other. And so we come to the first major cultural illusion in Russian-Serbian ties, and that is language. Although Orfelin thought that the Slavic-Serbian language in which he wrote the biography of Peter the Great and otherwise used was a Slavic language that the Russians understood – it was not the case. In the Russian edition of his book from 1774, the editor Trojepolјski replaced the old, archaic letters with letters from the Russian civic Cyrillic alphabet, and translated the incomprehensible words into the contemporary Russian language of the time. And as other evidence that the common language of the Russians and Serbs is a myth, we should remember that even Simeon Piščević, who went to Russia 1753 from the Austrian army, could not communicate with Russians in the Slavic-Serbian language, but had to use German. Both famous memoirs and the Book of the Serbian Nation – both books remained in the manuscript and were not published during his lifetime, but only in the 1880s – Piščević

wrote in the Russian language of the second half of the 18th century. Another Serbian author of this time touched Russia in his work. It was Jovan Rajić in the poem Battle of Dragon with Eagles printed in 1791. In the five sections of this poem, the writer mentions the war of Russia and Austria against Turkey from 1788-1790, considering it important for the fate of the Serbian people. TRUE AND FALSE EMPERORS Even the greatest name of the Serbian Enlightenment, Dositej Obradović, in several places in his works emphasizes the Russian emperor Peter the Great as a great example of an enlightened ruler, and says: “Blessed the great Emperor Peter of Russia! And blessed the womb that carried him! For, if it were not for him, they would bow down do ass’s legs until present day!” In his famous poem “The Poem about the Liberation of Serbia” (1789) Dositej glorifies the Russian Empress Catherine II and the Emperor Joseph II, as well as the commanders Suvorov and Laudon. And there is another one of his poems about the Russian Empress entitled “Catherine the Great”, which was so popular that it was published in Petrograd in 1806. In this way also, the constantly present figure of the Russian emperor was presented as a symbol of magnitude and protection in the minds of the Serbs, as well as the image of Russia as an emancipatory, enlightening force that will raise the Serbs from the darkness of ignorance. (It is interesting to remember the episodes from the life of Dositej Obradović,

when he, as a boy from leaves his native Čakovo and goes to Hopovo Monastery with the desire to become a monk. His friend Nikola Niko Putin also went with him to Hopovo. Not long after the arrival in the monastery, Putin’s angry mother comes to pick him up and return him to Banat and after that all historical traces about Niko Putin are lost. Some researchers in Timisoara, at the beginning of this century, encouraged by the popularity of Russian president Vladimir Putin, tried to find something new about Dositej’s friend Niko Putin, but without success. They acknowledged that there is no one else any more with last name Putin in Čakovo, but they found indirect data that Serbs in the second half of the 18th century moved from Banat to Russia. And this is, however, sufficient to create another Serbian-Russian myth.) Moving further through time, we come to Njegoš. The last significant work of Petar II Petrović Njegoš will be related to Russia. It is the poem False Emperor Šćepan the Lit tle, o published in 1851, which deals with the appearance of a stranger in Montenegro who presented himself as Russian Emperor Peter III and managed to rule Montenegro from 1767 to 1773. Through the ironic representation of Montenegrin everyday life, he presents the attitude of the people and Montenegrin noblemen towards him, as well as the confusion caused by the appearance of Šćepan the Little among the Russian and Turkish authorities. And precisely because he presented himself as a Russian emperor, the stranger immediately earned the trust of the Montenegrins, because according to the already established and de-

scribed cultural-mythical matrix, the Russian emperor is their ruler, and they easily accept him without any doubt. Therefore, for this Njegoš’s work, Miodrag Pavlović notes that of the three Njegoš’s great poems, False Emperor Šćepan the Little, as the last in a series, brings the reading of history, relativism of values, heroics and the image of its reverse. And as such early sensing of the time and value order that will soon come, this work is especially significant in the entire Serbian literature. It is particularly atypical in the era of romanticism that firmly embraced the epic matrices and in which the mythic view of the SerbianRussian Orthodox fraternity is immanent.

 Simeon Milutinović Sarajlija (1791–1847) Petar II Petrović Njegoš (1813–1851) Dositej Obradović (1739–1811)

SAD BEAUTY OF A METAPHOR In the decades that ensued, Serbian culture and education will be developed  Zaharije Orfelin (1726–1785) and institutionalized, and Russian literature will increasingly be translated into Serbian, thus affecting both Serbian writers and readers. However, the 20th century will be the era in which some of the most important works of Serbian literature will be created, in which Russia will be an important thematic backbone. Thus, one of the best storytellers of the first half of the 20th century, Dragiša Vasić, together with several other artists, will visit the USSR only a few years after the October Revolution (1925) and then publish a travelogue entitled The Impressions from Russia.

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 Milorad Pavić (1929–2009) with his borzoi

(It is interesting to note that for Vasić, just like for many Serbs, Russia is a synonym for the USSR. And it will remain so until the end of the existence of the first socialist country.) Traveling to post-revolutionary Russia had the meaning of a creative act for Vasić. Discovering Russia as if was discovering the power of an artistic expression. This quest for expression was a good reason to develop a network of personal, emotional, literary motivations in the form of “drunkenness from Russian literature”, an imaginary experience of “Russian land, Russian birch where Pushkin fell, Russian winters, Russian troikas or samovar music”. The creative process and thinking in the national categories lead the writer to the discovery of post-revolution Russia. This Vasić’s književna literary image of imaginary Russia shows this great country as “complex and mysterious”, imbued with mutually contrasting phenomena, which “one moment enchant with their attraction, and the other evoke deep sadness with their dark sides”. In the end, Vasić says: “But what I have seen, what I witnessed, this is something more immense and infinite, it is a spiritual disorder, it is a historical disorder, it is a humanity disorder”. It seems that it was possible to give a better definition of Russia at that time. Only a year after Vasić’s book, in 1929, Miloš Crnjanski published the novel Migrations, one of the best novels written in Serbian language. The plot follows the Serbs of the border guard, soldiers of the SlavonianDanube regiment who go to war in 1744/45, waged by the Austrians against the French. Living in poverty in the wetland settlements of the southern Srem and fighting for others without meaning and understanding, there is a foggy but strong desire for a better and more beautiful life living in them. And so the comforting desire to move to Russia is born – a mythical place of a better life, a great, beautiful, powerful and distant

Orthodox empire (which they do not really know anything about). Thirty years later (1962), Crnjanski published The Sec ond Book of Migrations, which thematically built upon the first novel. The incentive for creation certainly came after reading the memoirs of Simeon Piščević, who had become an Austrian officer, and then moved to Russia where he advanced to the rank of general-mayor. The plot of the second novel follows those Serbs who really succeeded in moving from Austria to Russia. Unused to deal with the Austrian empire, the Serbian border guards dream of the salvific departure to Russia. In their imagination, going to Russia had to look like a triumphal journey to the great Orthodox brother, a way of purification from all the misery of the former, after which they would start a new, bright life, without the burden of remembering the old. When the most resolute of them travel the long and dangerous journey, they will come to Russia and face the demystification of their dream. The journey will often resemble a family escape, and the chaste naivety of some of the Crnjanski‘s characters will, like sad beauty, become a metaphor for the misfortune of Serbian immigration. In addition to revealing that life is everywhere essentially the same, the Serbs in Russia will also face the process of disappearing, assimilation and rapid dissolution into the great Slavic sea. Some hundred years after the migration of the Serbs to Russia, Crnjanski will notice, in the Kherson province there were still about a thousand people who declared themselves as Serbs at the census. And in 1900 there were no more Serbs there. Therefore, unhappy in the Austrian empire, the Serbs will move into the Russian empire and – disappear. Thus, in the perspective of the first and the second Migrations, Russia will be the venue of the great Serbian myth and illusion of the possibility of a better life. REVOLUTION, ITS CHILDREN AND ITS VICTIMS This great Serbian writer will return to Russia for the third time, in his Novel on London in 1971. Reflecting on the life situation of Crnjanski himself who remains an expat in London after World War Two, this novel speaks of prince Nikolai Riepnin and his wife Nadia who, after the October Revolution, along with many emigrants from

imperial Russia, are wandering around Europe seeking refuge and finding it in London. Although he feels like a victim of the revolution, in the days of World War II, Prince Riepnin feels happiness while listening to reports about the victories of the Red Army (for him, this is just another name for the Russian army), revealing such a deep and politically unmotivated loyalty to his home country. Complex and mysterious, large and scary at the same time. Reflecting certainly in the narrative about Russia also the thought of Serbia and showing such a deep conviction about the destined connectedness of the two countries. It is undisputed that these three novels of Crnjanski, probably the best in his opus and among the best in all Serbian literature, give some of the most striking images of Russia in our culture, above all as a utopia and myth of salvation. Shortly after these novels, in 1976, another great Serbian writer of the 20th century, Danilo Kiš, will publish a collection of stories (or a cyclical novel) with a pronounced Russian theme – The Tomb for Boris Davi dovich. In the book of interviews The Bit ter Residue of Experience, Kiš will say about The Tomb: “It was essential for me to find, in my domain, fiction, fictitious, the end of my obsession and concealed controversy with a

totalitarian world and mind. I also thought it to be my moral duty, since I was referring to Nazi terror in some of my books, to come close, in a literary form, to the second most important phenomena of our century that produced Soviet concentration camps.” Thus, through the stories in this the collection, the USSR, or Russia, will be shown as a field in which the desire for a just and better society has turned into fear and dogma. After the conflict with the Information Bureau of 1948, this literary perspective for Yugoslavia was not surprising, but Kiš pointed to the extent to which this perspective of looking at the USSR seemed incredible for the left-wing intellectuals in the West, who simply could not believe that the Soviet revolution was devouring his children.

 Milorad Pavić with his Russian interlocutors in Yasnaya Polyana, on the grave of L. N. Tolstoy

HOUNDS, CONSULS, FATES, COMMENTS A poetically different image of Russia will be presented by Milorad Pavić in his famous story “Russian Hound” from the collection with the same title (1979). A devoted Serbian baroque scholar will bring a postmodernist playful image of Russia as a mystical and mysterious space where the world’s most pernicious hunting dogs are bred and from which the most miraculous gemstones

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 Monument of Emperor Nikolai I in St. Petersburg, XIX century

come. And in the world famous novel Dic tionary of the Khazars (1984), the territory of southern Russia will be the place where the Khazar identity drama takes place and the process of merging and assimilation similar to the one from the first and second Migrations by Crnjanski. Although Russia here is just a “static” motif, in the Pavić’s narrative vision it becomes a place imbued with the mystery of the past and in which miracle, rather than reason, has the power. This sublime poetics of Pavić’s prose will be the highest aesthetic point of literary perception of Russia in Serbian literature during the 1980’s. However, at that time, the conflicts and cracks in the political system of socialist Yugoslavia start to be clearly visible, as well as Eastern Europe as a whole. National tensions are growing and probably as one of the literary responses to many issues opened up by this decade, a novel was created which, in a realistic way, brings back the theme of Russia among the broad readership audience. Bio It was a novel by the Russian Consul (with subtitle: Novel about Kosovo) by Vuk Drašković, published in 1988. The story follows Ivan Jastrebov, a Russian diplomat, historian, ethnographer and archaeologist, who was

a consul in Shkodra, Prizren, Janjina and Thessaloniki. In Prizren he served in the period 1870-1876 and 1879-1886. With his diplomatic activity, Jastrebov protected the Serbs in Kosovo and Metohija, trying to prevent their emigration and ethnic eradication of the Serbs. For this reason, finding direct parallels between the time about which he writes and the time in which he publishes the novel, Drašković snatched this historical person from oblivion. Telling the story of Jastrebov, he also revitalized the old Serbian mythical image from the 18th century about Russia as protector of the oppressed Orthodox Serbs. The novel was a bestseller and so on the eve of the bloody separation of the Yugoslav peoples, Russia (although then part of the USSR) again in the collective consciousness of Serbian society was given the role of a geographically distant but spiritually close space from which salvation could come. Not long after this novel, a book will appear that will bring together in itself, probably in artistically the best way, all previous literary perceptions of Russia. It is the novel of Destiny and Comments by Radoslav Petković, published in 1993. It is a work that has an extraordinary place in the author’s

opus, but is also one of undoubtedly the best newer Serbian novels, which was almost immediately after its publication acknowledged by both the critics and wide audience. Since this novel problematizes literary and cultural tradition ranging from Zaharije Orfelin (who is the most quoted writer in this novel) and Dositej Obradović (who is a hero in the novel), to Ivo Andrić, Miloš Crnjanski and Danilo Kiš, it is not surprising (we have already seen why) that the Russian theme has a significant place in it. Petković tells about the events of the 18th and 19th centuries that he relates to the events of the 20th century. The first part of the book tells about Pavel Volkov, a Russian navy officer of Serbian origin, facing his own destiny. The story of Volkov’s childhood reveals a great national story about migrations and identity, and the story of his officer career introduces to the reader historical and political circumstances in Europe at the beginning of the 19th century, while Volkov’s intelligence mission (to examine the possibility of maritime conquest of the southern Adriatic) and love affair in Trieste are taking place in parallel with an important moment of the Serbian community in Trieste, as well as with the First Serbian Uprising. Through the story of Pavel Volkov, the reader follows the fate of the two marginalized Serbian communities (in Trieste and in Russia), and through the vision of the Trieste community, he gives a view of the

First Serbian Uprising, or Serbia itself. The story of Volkov is also related to the fate of the Serbs from Boka who, at that time, are also threatened to be marginalized. A century and a half later, historian Pavle Vuković will find himself in Hungary during the Soviet military intervention and his fate will be similar to the fate of Pavel Volkov. Thus, we read the historian’s notes on the question of fate, the unfulfilled love, the communist rule in Yugoslavia, Hungarian revolution of 1956, search for Count Đorđe Branković and the meeting with Count Charnoevicz, as clear references to the great novels of Crnjanski. Volkov goes to Petrograd and on that journey he disappears, and in such series of events the Russian officers, and indirectly Russia, become a symbolic space of the mysterious, in which fates and stories about them meet, and Pavle Vuković will be it reflection in the 20th century. BIRD WATCHER THROUGH RUSSIAN WINDOW In the first two decades of the 21st century, Russian themes were present in Serbian literature in ways different to the  Relief in Orašac, in the place of extent in which the talents of the authors the First Serbian who worked on them were different. Thus, undoubtedly the most popular and most Uprising in 1804, praised novel by Dragan Velikić is entitled created by Milorad Russian Window (2007). Although this is Rašić and Zoran primarily a story of moving through Cen- Miladinović, 1990

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 Part of the sculpture composition on the Church of Christ the Savior in Moscow

tral Europe, the search for identity, escape from history (the bombing of 1999), the main hero will be essentially determined by loneliness and longing for distances, the desire to figure out the secret of “fortochka” – the Russian window in the paintings by Herman Vogel. In this novel, Russia exists as an indirect motive that repeats itself and varies several times as a detail in the image of an ancient Russian house with a small window in the top of the roof whose function is yet to be deciphered, which again presents Russia as an unknown and a space of secrets, in contrasts with the obvious meaninglessness of the Balkans. Another novel, published in 2010, is determined by reference to Russia. It is the Bird Watcher by Vida Ognjenović. Situated in the second half of the 20th century, the novel tells of the fate of the heroes, but also the spirit of the time in which they live. The main character has a crossed, Serbian-Russian identity, and through it the reader can follow stories of the Russian Protection Corps and Russian emigrants who came to the Kingdom of Yugoslavia after the October Revolution. Their lives will be linked to the art scene in Belgrade during and after World War Two, and Bulat Okudzhava and Vladimir Visocky will also find their place in the novel. With such a storyline, Vida Ognjenović painted a picture of Russia brought to our region by the Russians who, as immigrants, made an exceptional contribution to the development of the Serbian and Yugoslav society as a whole during the period between the

two world wars. There is also a confirmation of the special sensibility of Serbian culture towards Russian art, the strong influence it had in the aftermath of World War Two, thus testifying to the continuity of interest in Russian art, regardless of the changes that history of the 20th century brought to both Serbian and Russian society. THE CIRCLES OF PONDERING Finally, the story “Crucified on the Caucasus” by Miroslav Tohol, an extraordinary storyteller, one of the best in the generation that entered Serbian literature in the early 1980s, seems to summarize in itself most the literary image of Russia in our contemporary literature in the most remarkable way. The main hero, a Bosnian Serb, arrives in Moscow before the new year of 1995, hoping to meet with a large group of Russian volunteers (atamans, fired non-commissioned officers, veterans) who he would lead to Bosnia to fight on the Serb side. Days go by, and the hero tells his new friend, a Russian, a story how near the church of St. George near Goražde there are the graves of Russian soldiers from the Donian Cadet Corps who arrived in Bosnia with General Wrangel. Their gravestones will be demolished during the civil war, and those who did this believed that “general Dudayev in Grozny and Dudaković in Bihać were very close relatives”, and that they defend themselves from the invasion on Islamic nations. This Russian girl replies that what we have in common are “our root, our God, our Tatars, and our people who do not like us”. Although a new mythical circle of close-

ness is established in this way, the further course of action will show that even after a month of waiting for volunteers for Bosnia, there will be none of them, that the “Moscow connection” no longer calls, and Russia enters an internal debate on the meaning of military intervention in Chechnya. As a bottom line at the end of the story, the narrator returns to Bosnia and acknowledges there: “I am looking forward to the moment when they will return. Where are, Pasus, our volunteers?! They there are, I will say, crucified on the Caucasus.” Thus, once again, the myth of a great protector of Orthodox Christians proved to be an illusion in the Balkans at the end of the 20th century. Also, the story perfectly illustrates a moment that is equally traumatic for both the Russians and the Serbs, which is the disappearance of the states in which they lived for much of the 20th century (the USSR and the SFRY) and the inability to quickly adapt to the social and economic changes that followed the fall of the Berlin Wall. In the past two centuries, the image of Russia in Serbian literature has had an im-

portant creative place, since it was in the works with Russian themes that some of the most important topics of Serbian literature as a whole were embodied the best: enlightenment (Orfelin and Dositej), the dissolution of the epic world (Nјegoš), 20th century as murky times (Vasić), migrations and fate of immigration (Crnjanski and Petković), the playful restoration of myth (Pavić), demystification of ideology (Kiš), the fate of the repetition of history (Drašković), the fate of the Eastern European artists in the 20th century (Ognjenović) or melancholic irony of the myth (Toholј). Without much fear of exaggerating, we can say that the conceptualization of Russia in Serbian literature in a relatively small number of works has created the works of the greatest artistic significance, in which this great Slavic country was a creative incentive greater than any other country in the world. And the answer to the question of why this is so we will have to find somewhere between the myth, illusion and fascination with the depth and complexity of Russian culture and history, so close and distant to us at the same time. 

 Police Bridge in St. Petersburg, XIX century

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SERBS AND SERBIAN LANDS IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE, THEN AND NOW

Expanses of New Romantic Heroes Ever since Pushkin, Lermontov, Tolstoy, Tyutchev, Andreev… Serbian subjects and heroes have been present in Russian literature. The attractiveness, closeness and elusiveness of the Balkans still last. It’s the same today. Many contemporary Russian literature works are related to Serbs. War prose, patriotic poetry, science fiction, mythology and epic poetry, action and detective novels… We bring you this small review as an incentive for reading, translating and publishing By: Ana Jakovljević Radunović

erbs have entered Russian XIX century literature as romantic heroes from a territory where wars never cease. The awareness of the existence of Slavic Europe, close in faith, spirit and language, appeared with Alexander Pushkin’s Songs of the Western Slavs. Romanticism was no longer just

the foggy Albion and German geniuses; it was also the boiling Balkans, whose soil gave birth to unique heroes with specific ethics and their own truth. Europe was introduced to Serbs through the works of Goethe and Merimee, and the Russians discovered them by reading Pushkin’s verses.

Somewhat later, while creating the character of his Serb, Lermontov wrote about the art of living with wars, about the philosophically accepting fate, not calmly and obediently, but more heroically and in the ancient way. Officer and philosopherfatalist Vulich will become the key to understanding the hero of the novel Hero of Our Time. Fatalism, as the Balkan projection of the Caucasian text of Russian literature, created Russian romanticism (V. Maroshi wrote about it excellently) and made it speak its own language. Russian literature was formed in the moment it finally stopped imitating Europe and started speaking its own language, shedding metaphorical traps of metaphysical meanings. Serbia is an expanse where a battle for life and death is constantly fought and it as shown as such in different Russian texts: the hero of Ana Karenina – Vronsky – seeks death in Serbia, the hero of Leonid Andreev’s story “Foreigner” Rajko Vukich aches for Serbia, poet Tyutchev writes about Serbia and grieved for it. In Vladislav Khodasevich’s poem “Monkey”, written in the late 1918 and early 1919, a Serb appears on the day World War I began. This character indicates what had

happened in the four years of the war, as well as the immediate cause of the global catastrophe which caught the entire world, inexorably and in a flash, like a summer fire. The idyllic holiday scene is disrupted by the arrival of a Serb with a monkey, just like the course of world history has changed in the moment a Serbian young boy, Gavrilo Princip, shot the Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand. Khodasevich observes the war as a category present through the entire history of human civilization. Since history is eternally repeating, Dmitry Bykov in his poem “Serbian Dance to the Ballad of the Great Return” (collection of poems Clearly, 2014) describes the same event from the beginning of the world war, but with much more cynicism towards the Serbian young

 Church in Adrovac, in the place of Colonel Rayevsky’s (Vronsky) death  Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910)

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men who thought they could confront the occupier. In the writer’s version, this war has never and will never stop. Bykov deals with the same subject in his poem “Farewell of the Slavic Girl”, in which the same war connects the Carpathian and Balkan mountains. FIERY VUK AND THE CYRILLIC ALPHABET CHORUS

 Leonid Andreev (1871–1919), portrait, created by Ilya Repin

The last decade of the XX century again brought Serbs and the Balkans into the center of attention of Russian writers. The disintegration of Yugoslavia and wars that accompanied it became an inspiration and polygon for testing personal capabilities of a certain number of writers. Eduard Limonov was one of the first who set off to the Balkan lands, Serbian and others, affected by the wars. Just like Caucasus served as an arena for feats and escape into the exotics in the XIX century for Lermontov and several generations of Russian aristocrats and intellectuals, the Balkan wars became Limonov’s

polygon for testing and proving himself in the late XX century. He was preparing to use all the knowledge gained in the Balkans, in case of need, in the territory of the Russian state. The writer’s experiences from the wars, encounters with common Serbian soldiers, as well as those leading the Serbian army formations, became part of his controversial book Anat omy of the Hero. The subject of Russian volunteers is frequent in contemporary Russian works writing about Serbia, both in nonfiction and documentary texts, and is mostly based on facts. The writers who wrote about Russian soldiers who participated in Serbian wars include: Oleg Valetsky (White Wolves, Serbian Diary of a Russian Volun teer 1993‒1999), Mikhail Polikarpov (Rus sian Squad, Our People in Serbia, Serbian Twilight, The Balkan Borderline, Russian Volunteers in Battles for Serbia), Vladislav Shurygin (Bidding Farewell to Kosovo), Boris Zemtsov (Volunteers). Memories of soldiers from the battalion transferred from Bosnia to Kosovo, such as Alexander Zelichenko’s Kosovo Diary and Alexander Lobanzev’s Kosovo 99 also belong to such type of texts. Sergei Stratanovski, poet from St. Petersburg, also writes about Russian volunteers in the Serbian lands in his collection of poems Cyrillic Alphabet Cho rus (1999). The romantic subjects of death and fate are continued through Stratanovsky’s verses, whose hero Fiery Vuk wishes to help his brothers in faith and die from a bullet in Kosovo Polje.

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 Skadarlija, old poets’ and bohemian quarter in Belgrade (Photo: Vlada Marinković, from the book “Serbia under Heaven”, Belgrade, 2017)  Through the window of Prince Miloš’s quarters: Topčider Park in Belgrade (Photo: Aleksandar Ćosić, from the book “Serbian under Heaven”)

In Alexander Tutov’s novel Russians in Sarajevo. Less Known Pages of the Unfortu nate War, a Russian doctor comes to Sarajevo to save people, but in the war circumstances, he is forced to treat both his own and the enemy soldiers, as well as to shoot and kill. One of the main questions the author is trying to answer is why have numerous Russians participated in the wars in Yugoslavia between 1992 and 1995. THE ACTION PATTERN There are many action novels and thrillers which take place in Serbian lands, most often in Kosovo, and write about conflicts with Albanians. As a rule, there is enormous interest for works of this genre, although there is little truth and history in them. Dmitry Cherkasov’s Night over Serbia initiated the TV series Rokotov: The Balkan Ti ger, Kosovo Polje. The Balkans, Kosovo Polje. Russia, the Last Soldier of the President. A movie was made based on Ivan Naumov’s novel The Balkan Borderline, about the entrance of the Russian battalion in Kosovo. Also famous is the detective novel Traitor, written by Alexander Novikov and Andrei Konstantinov, based on the story about the death of Soviet reporters Nogin and Kuren in the early 1990s. The hero of this novel, popular TV program presenter Vladimir Mukuseev, decides to conduct his own in-

vestigation and flies to Yugoslavia. Alexander Vladimirovich Markov and Vitaly Ivanovich Pishchenko have chosen reporter Sergei Komov for their main hero in their novel Based on the Law of Hatred. In order to answer the question why NATO bombs are falling on cities and villages, he is sent to the Balkans, where he confronts the same dangers as the soldiers. Sergei Zverev wrote the novel Born in Casings, describing the fights of the Russian navy special forces and their commander captain Tatarinov against Albanian arms dealers. In the novel Legionary, the commander of the Foreign Legion squad tries to establish control over the ignited conflict between Serbs and Albanians. When the Albanians kidnap one of the soldiers from the squad, they ask for the psychotropic generator as ransom, which the former Russian commando rejects. Action novels have also dealt with events and conflicts in Bosnia. The civil war in Bosnia has kept the entire world in tension for years, and nobody was indifferent towards it in Russia. Russian volunteers have gone to the war. Ordinary people sent money and material aid. Politicians gave statements of support. It seemed that all Russians were on the side of their Orthodox Serbian brothers. Egor Ovcharenko’s Last Offensive on the West writes about the adventures of Dmitry

Emelyanov, who became a mercenary on the Serbian side. He risks his life every day hoping to get rich and leave to some peaceful country with the woman he loves, a Croatian girl named Zlata. Maxim Mikhailov in his works Clouds over Bos nia and By Shooting Your Brother You Kill Yourself shows how Russian volunteers in Republika Srpska fought against the “Black Swallows” – Muslim special forces, and the “Jokers” – Russian mercenaries in the Croatian army. Unlike Mikhailov, Alexei Victorovich Sviridov and Alexander Victorovich Biryukov in their Torn Skies write about people who tried to prove that Serbs were not the cause of the overall evil. Very popular is also Alexander Afanasiev’s (Markianov’s) novel White Tigers which combines the names of two famous military units in its title – “White Wolves” and “Arkan’s Tigers”. THE CODE OF SLAVIC MYTHOLOGY AND EPIC POETRY The popularity of fiction based on Slavic subjects aroused interest for Serbian folklore. Serbian subjects are very frequent in the works of Jelena Vladimirovna Haetska. The heroes of Stanislav Senykin from his novel Conspiracy of the Dragon. Secret Chronicles are pulled into the eternal conflict between the Roman-German civiliza-

tion and Byzantium. In this novel full of mysteries, an oak tree with a Serbian name Dušan appears, whom the winds bring news about mysterious forces that will confront the Eastern Christian civilization. Zadunavski Vuk is a Russian author who writes science fiction based on the Balkan and Byzantine historical material. The author takes his readers to the cruel and picturesque world of the Balkans and describes events that influenced the course of the later world history. The readers watch the Battle of Kosovo together with Miloš Obilić and spend the last days and hours of Constantinople before its final fall with monk Dimitrije. The author creates interesting characters which decorate the valuable Crown of the Balkans, at the same time presenting the bylina style and discourse of Russian epic poetry. Science fiction works are most often related to the name of Nikola Tesla, such as Alyona Dashuk’s Tesla’s Pi geons. Konstantin

 Monument to F. M. Dostoyevsky (1821–1881) in Moscow

T R A C E S  Serbian Kosovo is a frequent subject in contemporary Russian literature: Velika Hoča and Šar-mountains (Photo: Aleksandar Radoš, from the book “Serbia under Heaven”, Belgrade, 2017)  Monument to Lermontov (1814–1841) in Moscow

Kalbasov’s Armored Walkers. My Grenade depicts an alternative history in which Nikola Tesla didn’t become a man who changed the world with electricity. In this book, he sends mankind to a different path of development with steam engines. There is also a series of works in which the world shadow government tries to get hold of the lost relics of Serbian people: Svetlana Zhuravska’s Shadow Led by God, Alexei Kondratenko’s Katarina: the Number of Be ginnings and Dmitry Aglakov’s Soldiers of the Age of Aquarius. In historical and adventure novels, Serbia is shown as an eternally rebelled land within the Ottoman Empire. Victor Vasilevich’s Hero. Devshirme revives the era of prince Lazar and the courageous fight of Serbs with the Ottoman hordes. Marker of His Majesty speaks about the historical circumstances in the XVII century. The Ethnogenesis series mostly comprises of adventure and science fiction works, including Kiril Benedictov’s The Balkans. Dracula and Sergei Volkov’s Soldiers of Misfortune. When Volkov’s hero saves a young entrepreneur, he will go on the other side of law and hunted both by criminals and police officers. As a way out, his coach suggests him to go to the Balkans, where a war has been going on for several years. There are also adventure biographies, such as Boris Ponomaryov’s and Mustapha Golubich’s Stalin’s Secret Agent. In Victor Alexandrov’s novel Their Guiding Star, an officer believed to be dead returns from Belgrade to St. Petersburg in 1905 from a secret mission. He becomes involved in the work of a group of revolutionaries and thanks to his intellect, courageousness and skills, reveals a spy and saves the girl he has fallen in love with.

IN THE WHIRLPOOLS OF EMPIRES Famous reporter Andrei Shary, correspondent of Radio “Free Europe” from the Balkans (Zagreb) from 1993 to 1996, deals with historical subjects in his two books Balkans – Periphery of an Empire and The Danube – The River of the Empire. Due to its exoticness, crime novels in which truth and credibility are not that important to authors present Serbia in the Hollywood manner. Chingiz Akifovich Abdullaev brings detective Drong, his hero, in connection with crimes related to Serbia and wars in the Balkans: first in his Pricelist for the Publisher and then in his novel The Balkan Syndrome. In his Body of Milosović, Alexei Valentinovich Mitrofanov depicts deputy Filatov, who comes to Belgrade as member of the Russian parliament delegation to the funeral of the former Serbian president. The tension reaches its climax when a coffin, similar to the one Milosović was buried in, is boarded on the plane to Moscow. Filatov begins his own investigation, suspecting that the old gardener in the country house, where the former leader’s family lives, is the real Milosović. Interesting is Eduard Verkin’s novel Anna’s Ashes. There is a special Serbian atmosphere in it, which the author brought impressed by his visit to the Belgrade Book Fair, but it is politicized to a certain extent. Serbian subjects are also present in children’s patriotic literature, in Veronika Kungurtseva’s Mockingbird’s Field or Van ya Zhitni in the War. Vanya Zhitni, with his friends, house spirit Conifer Birch and flying girl Golden Forest, leaves to the Balkans searching for the last fairy. The travel through time will bring the heroes to the war which ripped former Yugoslavia apart. Serbia is present in Russian literature as an expanse with constant warfare, ever since the beginning of time. It is a place of a constant battle between good and evil, a place of collision of different empires, religions, states and organizations. In this turbulent land, in heroic situations, contemporary romantic heroes are confirmed and shown in contemporary Russian literature. 

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To Stop and Remember SOME IMPORTANT DATES IN SERBIAN LITERATURE 2019

It will be exactly a century since the publishing of the “Lyrics of Ithaca”, a milestone collection of poems by Miloš Crnjanski. It is the 70th anniversary since the death of Rastko Petrović, 30th since the departure of Danilo Kiš. One hundred and twenty years ago, Rade Drainac was born, ninety years ago Aleksandar Popović. Through their literature and fate the depths of the centuries open up before us, especially the 20th, filled with noise and cries. And we understand again why it is the feat, beauty and shame that will save the world By: Vesna Kapor

fter World War One, in Serbian literature, like throughout Europe, new tendencies and poetics are being strengthened. A new generation of writers is being publish-

ed, opposing everything that had ever been deemed acceptable. They sought to change everything, they mixed and adapted the genres, experimented with language and the themes, introduced

the poetics of coarse and ugly, they thundered, sang, drank. Serbian writers, almost all, had a terrible experience of war. Many of them crossed Albania, were in Greece, then they all over Europe, for military or private business. Changes in literature that were already announced before will continue after the war. (Unfortunately, many of the authors of the new spirit and modernity were killed: Bojić, Dis, Uskoković...). Postwar energy and bellicosity, the feeling that the experience cannot be expressed in the language and forms of the past, grows into something more than a literary work. They become the strongholds of the new age. Miloš Crnjanski, Rastko Petrović, Ivo Andrić, Stanislav Krakov, Stanislav Vinaver, Dragiša Vasić, Rade Drainac... Belgrade is at the center of all events. War veterans, students from Paris, and those from the regions that belonged to Austria-Hungary come there. “Moscow” Restaurant, at Terazije Square, is becoming the center of the tumultuous artistic life. It was not a uniform movement. In addition to the multitude of already disclosed European “-isms”, Serbian and Yu-

goslav writers add their own: Sumatraism,  Belgrade photoHypnism, Zenithism... The critics of that reporters, around time used the name between-the-wars mod 1932 (Photo: ernism, although this period, in the opin- Aleksandar Simić. ion of many theoreticians, can creatively be From Darko Ćirić’s classified as expressionism or surrealism. “Urban Nomad”, It was a great and splendid time in SerCity of Belgrade bian culture. Museum, 2011) In this climate, Miloš Crnjanski, Rastko Petrović and Rade Drainac come of age  Terazije Square and are being published. “We sing in free and “Moscow” verse, which is a consequence of our conhotel in Belgrade, tent”, says Crnjanski. 1920s Unfortunately, many of them will later be targeted by the Communist regime. In 1954, Marko Ristić publishes the essay “Three Dead Poets”, in which he declares Miloš Crnjanski and Rastko Petrović dead. Many of them will die in emigration, and their works will be marginalized for a long time (R. Petrović, S. Krakov, D. Vasić...). Only Crnjanski will live to return to Yugoslavia, and an army of readers in full auditoriums across Serbia will applaud him. “The world was hungry for Crnjanski”, writes the poet Rajko Petrov Nogo, as the editor of one of these round tables.

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MILOŠ CRNJANSKI (1893–1977) “I have fulfilled my destiny”, Crnjanski used to say. One of the most intriguing and greatest personalities of Serbian literature. From his very appearance in the literary life, through exile days during communism, until the return to the country, then Yugoslavia, his charisma does not fade. With his books, he reached the status of a modern classic, but his life is no less important for the study of his poetics. This year is exactly one century since the publishing of the Lyrics of Ithaca (1919), his first milestone collection of poems. This collection, courageous, bold, challenging, bitter, in its deep thematic layer facing the war experiences, on the other hand expressed in a soft, elegiac language, leads the reader to a unique journey from horror to longing. Still, the famous Belgrade publisher, Cvijanović, three times decided not to print this collection of war-patriotic lyrics, as the author himself called it. The poet writes that Odyssey is the greatest poem of humanity and that the return from war is the saddest human feeling. The youth war experience, expressed in the Lyrics of Ithaca and The Explanation of Sumatra (1920), marked the literary opus of Crnjanski; this belief is at the same time one of the most important manifestos of the new generation and a new artistic orientation. In this poetry, defeatism and tenderness touch each other. It was only in 1959 that the writer himself would prepare, and “Prosveta” will publish, the book Ithaca and Comments. In addition to the selected poems, it also contains prose texts, as comments. This prose is also an extraordinary poetic whole. Through all of his works, Crnjanski will mix features of genres, bringing the strength, character and immenseness of his talent into everything. His novel Diary about Čarnojević (1921) is an overthrow in Serbian literature. The novel in which the classic form is completely broken. In his later novels (Migrations, The Second Book of Migrations and Novel on London) he uses traditional elements in a unique manner. That is the essence of his poetics: to make tradition unusual, to make it eternally contemporary. Miloš Crnjanski is a metaphor of Serbian culture in the 20th century. His opus

and life are testimony to the most significant literary, poetic and historical changes in the past century. In novels, he writes the history of the modern era, from the time of Enlightenment to the outlines of the postmodern, from the migrations of the Serbs to the wandering of an individual in contemporary megalopolis. In poetry, he returns to the lyrical experience of Romanticism, transforming it into the avant-garde poetics of Sumatraism. Through his opus, world is measured and understood. In Hyperborea one can live, through Embahade study history and philosophy. With Prince Repnin and Nadia (A Novel about London), understand despair, respect, sacrifice and love. With the Isakovičs (The Migrations) share the deepest suffering, illusions and hopes of the nation. The Lyrics of Ithaca and Diary about Čarnojević are pure human heart. He understood, right after the end of the Great War, that a new and equally bloody Europe was appearing. He is referred to as an anarchist, nihilist, rightist... An unwilling soldier of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, a journalist, a polemic, a football fan, an irresistible charmer, a traveler, an exile, a man about whom many anecdotes have been recorded. Crnjanski has been an eternally live and intricate Serbian story. For centuries. At the level of excess, subversive for all political systems. The orientation toward Crnjanski, as Milo Lompar says, has the meaning of orientation toward freedom in a pre-set system of values.

 Miloš Crnjanski, pastel, work of Mihail Kulačić, 2013

Photo: NR archive and private collections

Diary about Crnjanski Miloš Crnjanski (1893–1997). Born in Csongrád, he died in Belgrade. He published his first poem in magazine Golub, in 1908. Between the two world wars he worked as a professor, as a journalist, a diplomat. He spoke several languages, often travelled and moved around. He wrote for “Vreme”, “Politika”, “Naša krila”, “Jadranska straža”... He started the magazine “Ideje” (1934). When World War II broke out, he found himself at a diplomatic mission in Italy. During the war he lived in London, where he remained afterwards. He had difficult life, barely surviving; for some time he works in a shoemaker’s shop and as a book carrier, and his wife Vida makes dolls. Although the opponent of communism, he returned to Yugoslavia in 1965. His most important works are: “Mask” (1918), “Lyrics of Ithaca” (1919), “Stories about the Male” (1920), “Diary about Čarnojević” (1921), “Migrations” (1929), “Love in Tuscany” (1930), “The Book of Germany” (1931), “Residence” (1958), “Lament over Belgrade” (1962), “The Second Book of the Migrations” (1962), “The Hyperborean” (1966), “Nikola Tesla” (1967), “A Novel about London” (1971), “Stražilovo” (1973). “The Book of Michelangelo” (1981) and “Embahade” (1983) were published posthumously.

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 Rastko Petrović

RASTKO PETROVIĆ (1898–1949) “He escaped through Albania, where he ate molded bread and warmed himself next to other people’s furnaces... You could have killed a man without being held liable, you could have died without anybody even looking at you... He saw people who, due to hunger, torture, despair, ceased to belong to the human race, those who had been thrown into the river and those who

had already rotted. He saw thousands of his peers propagating wandering aimlessly through the fog, every once in a while leaving behind their exhausted comrades to die on the road...” (Rastko Petrović, 1942) That is how they grew up together, he and his Motherland; he and his talent. This could not be separated from each other, wrote Zoran Mišić about Rastko Petrović. Seventeen-year-old Rastko Petrović was one of those who retreated through

People Remember Rastko Petrović (1898–1949). Poet, storyteller, novelist, essayist, travel writer, painter, art and literary critic. Books published in his lifetime: “The Kosovo Sonnets” (Corfu, 1917), “A Burlesque of Lord Perun: God of Thunder” (1921), “Revelation” (1922), “With Forces Immeasurable” (1927), “Africa” (1930) “People Speak” (1931), “The Sixth Days” (1961). He also published art criticisms in magazines. He influenced the development of Serbian modern art.

Albania during the Great War in. Like others, despite the suffering and horror, he was driven and fueled by the heart of togetherness, the heart of the Motherland. On that road he made friends with young Milutin Bojić. They say that the two of them, during breaks, cheerfully hung out together and spoke the verses aloud. Along with those thousands of sufferers, Rastko would feel deep attachment to human being, for their suffering and fate. Those signs of seen and experienced will never disappear in him. His words are tempest, cosmic chaos and at the same time the most valuable star dust; everything is constantly in a whirlpool, in motion, exploration, unrest. Love for his country, people, motherland, deep passion for history, as well as a desire for new knowledge, for other cultures, travels, Rastko brought from his parents’ house. The older sister, famous painter Nadežda Petrović, was his role model. After the war, Rastko continued his education in Paris, and socialized with wellknown French modern artists (moving in the same circle with Picasso, Breton, Éluard...). He, says Svetlana Velmar Janković, brought that fire of the new from Paris, the rest collected his fervor. ,. He is interested in everything: the art and literature of the Middle Ages (fascinated by frescoes from Serbian monasteries), Renaissance, ethnography, the history of old Slavs, painting, the film as a challenge of the modern age. Unrestrained, curious, intuitive, abundant in talents, ecstatic, with a deep sense of pagan and atavistic, filled with visions, eager to feel everything, to experience, Rastko writes the most marvelous pages of Serbian literature. He does not express the

difficult personal experiences in anger and contempt for the traditional expression, like most modernists, but in a magnificent dimension of Slavic mythology, as well as biblical and apocryphal motifs. “In the generation of young people he was the most extravagant”, says Professor Jovan Deretić. His novel A Burlesque of Lord Perun: God of Thunder (1920) and the collection of poems Revelations (1921), provoke great controversy. Isidora Sekulić and Miloš Crnjanski support him and praise him. “Rastko’s novel is not only a prominent example of avant-garde mixing of genres, but is actually a parody of all existing genres”, notes Professor Predrag Petrović. “Rastko saw himself mostly as a passenger. This symbol was his favorite”, writes Stanislav Vinaver. “The passenger always discovers something. The passenger has never arrived, nor has fixed anything: after the journey comes another journey.” In the travelogue Africa (1930) and the short novel People Speak (1931), a more subdued sensibility is revealed. Africa is not only a poetic-lyrical picture of exotic lands and nations, but a documentary article. Rastko also shoots several short films there. The book People Speak, described both as a short lyrical prose and as a novel, is a profound metaphysical search for meaning. By recording the simple sentenc Nadežda es and actions of people on an island, the Petrović, Rastko writer uses as a leitmotiv the thought that Petrović’s sister and life is “a truly unique thing”. role-model The Sixth Day, written for a long time and published posthumously, monumental in its vision, told in the third person, with a distance, is one of the most tragic and suggestive images of the Serbian suffering in World War One. World War Two finds Rastko Petrović in the diplomatic service, in America. After the war and regime change in Yugoslavia, he remained to live in Washington. He also died there, in 1949, exactly seventy years ago. His remains were transferred to Belgrade, to a family tomb, in 1986.

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 Rade Drainac with friends, late 1920s At a reporter’s task, 1935

RADE DRAINAC (1899–1943) “My hunger is endless and my hands are eternally empty.” Contrary to the poet’s rebellious, subversive, ecstatic quest and the feeling of the new, it is precisely this verse, with its austerity and simplicity, that depicts his life. In this seemingly simple pic-

Poet or bandit Rade Drainac / Radojko Jovanović (1899–1943). He was born in Trbunje, in Toplice, and died in Belgrade in the war year of 1943. Fascinated by Paris, he was there again in 1926. He lives a bohemian life, but returns to Belgrade due to illness. In addition to poetry, he also wrote feuilletons, travel books, art and literary criticism, polemics and pamphlets. Journalism was his main source of income and the opportunity to travel. The most important books: “The Blue Laugh” (1920), “Aphrodite’s Garden” (1921), “The Train Departs” (1923), “The Heart on the Market” (1929), “Bandit or Poet” (1928), “Banquet” (1930), “The Spirit of the Earth” (1940).

ture of eternal and futile longing for infinity, everything that the poet was in between can be placed. All bursting verses filled with noise, spook, creaks, dissonant and wild. Rade Drainac (Radojko Jovanović), like most Serbian poets of his generation, as a high school student retreated across Albania with the Serbian army, and then continued his education in France. With restless spirit, in 1918 he interrupted his education and returned to Belgrade. Like most artists returnees from the war, he spent most of the time in “Moscow” restaurant. Influenced by the spirit of the new era, in 1922, he published the magazine the Hypnos in which he proclaims a new style: Hypnism. Give us some fear – some outer space – horror – a little bit of your blood, to see at least one thread of a naked soul... Give us ethereality: in which the Universe is.

He had the need to feverishly explore outside the boundaries of self, homeland or identity. Born in the village, exactly one hundred and twenty years ago, on the one hand he has an inseparable attachment to the primal, restlessness, the sense of archetypal freedom, and yet he becomes a poet of the city, noise, the chaos of the coming world. Ironic, daring, anarchic. In his verses everything is constantly on the move, in action. Raw life, naked reality, smells of taverns, docks, railway cars, noise of big cities. He, a child of the village, deeply understands the rhythm of the cosmos, and from this perspective all earthly matters, history, politics are irrelevant. The city about which he writes poems is not even a single toponym specifically, it is a poetic vision, and the main character of all these profound and passionate sayings, even when

he comes out of the shadow: Raka Drainac. A restless person, about whose life there are many anecdotes. Known not only for literary discussions, but also for physical fights with a group of surrealists, for whom he says, among others: “They all look alike, they only don’t look like themselves.” “All these different elements, modernity and primitivism, cosmism and exoticism, boasting and sentimentality, merge into a unique and rich lyrical fabric of this poet...” writes Prof. Jovan Deretić. When Rade Drainac died, they say, in the field “place of residence” it was written: without the street name and apartment number. This relative of Yesenin and Apollinaire, as he saw himself, who wrote the verse Ah, I was very sick, and starved even more, now finally has a secure address in Serbian literature and our memory.

 Rade Drainac, 1927

A N N I V E R S A R I E S  Danilo Kiš, Belgrade, Palmotićeva 21, 1965

 Danilo Kiš in Kalemegdan, Belgrade, 1957 (Photographs from the book: Danilo Kiš, “Warehouse”, edited by Mirjana Miočinović, BIGZ, Belgrade, 1995)

DANILO KIŠ (1935–1989) “Tell me, did I make up all this?” This simple question, from Early Sorrows, truly haunts both the writer and the reader. Where is the boundary between memory and reality and does it exist for a writer at all? Doesn’t the writer live irreversibly enchanted, trapped between the real and imagined? “If it hasn’t been for my war experience, in my early childhood, I would never become a writer.” This sentence determines the depth of Kiš’ creative attachment to suffering. Subdued and inexpressible awareness of death, its constant presence in the air, in smells, in colors, in forms, once experienced, always returns. Or, better, it never leaves the man. The words that must be said, which must find the way of being outed, appear as images-visions. The initial thought hovers over them: did I make up all this? This suggestive sentence certainly does not mean completely bringing into question the things about which one writes; it just varies them. The experience of war is deep and forever present in everyone who lived through it, and the sensitive artistic soul is searching for a way to master this burden. Family trilogy (Early Sorrows, Gar den, Ashes and Hourglass), which the writer himself calls the Family Circus, carries dense reminiscence of deep and suppressed memories. About searching for ways to write out the traumatic years of war childhood and hard family fates without being pathetic, Kiš says: “In short, in that mixture I had to measure salt, pepper and sugar. I tried to destroy the lyrical spell by placing in the garden big pieces of metal scrap, such as that sewing machine. Or that long list of nouns from the lexicon, which is to destroy the smell of herbs in one part of the book.” Throughout this search for himself in this trilogy, the boy Andreas Sam is obsessed with the father figure who disappears in a Nazi camp (the parallels between Andreas Sam and the poet’s biography is unavoidable). Lyrical and documentary intertwine and crisscross through Kiš’ entire opus.

To Late Sorrows Danilo Kiš (1935–1989). Born in Subotica, died in Paris, buried in Belgrade. A novelist, storyteller, essayist, playwright, translator from French, Russian and Hungarian. The most important works: “Mansard” (1962), “Psalm 44” (1962), “Garden, Ashes” (1965), “Night and Fog” (1968), “Early Sorrows” (1969), “Hourglass” (1972), “A Tomb for Boris Davidovich” (1976), “Anatomy Lesson” (1978), “Encyclopedia of the Dead” (1983). Posthumously: “Bitter Deposit of Experience” (1990), “Lute and Scars” (1994), “Warehouse” (1995).

The family trilogy, as the author says, is one story told from different angles. Kiš’ prose is deeply metaphysical, deeply intuitive. The obsession with transience and disappearance brings constant anguish. In the story of the Encyclopedia of the Dead, through the main character, as the author would later say, the writer forebodes (actually invokes) illness and death. These things should not be taken lightly, he would say later, in illness. Danilo Kiš is another Serbian writer whose life and work were marked by controversy. The book The Tomb of Boris Davi dovich (1976) provoked turbulent controversies, after which Kish leaves for Paris, in a kind of voluntary exile. At the “Andrić Award” ceremony, not by chance, he quoted Andrić’s words: “Still, nowhere is like in your own country, and I, there, cannot live either with her or without her.” As a proofreader and translator, he lived in France, with interruptions. He spoke several languages, but: “One can only know one language truly, the one in which he writes... I can say that I truly know only one language: Serbian. And that is the language in which I write in Paris too.” Danilo Kiš, a writer of great momentum and magic, an excellent stylist, is one of the key Serbian and European writers of the second half of the 20th century. Demystifying the world through metaphysical quest, this unusual disheveled master, left-oriented, expresses doubts in God already as a boy, after his mother’s disease and death. Ali But, before the awareness of imminent end, he explicitly asks in his will to be buried in Belgrade, according to the Orthodox ritual, without speeches. 

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POET DRAGAN JOVANOVIĆ DANILOV AND HIS INNER CITY

The Art of Taming Volcanoes He survived all the eruptions of youth and learnt to saddle a tiger. He reached the point where poetry gilds the world. Where it becomes a form of love, a ritual, a salutary deviation. Preparation for departure. He wrote sixteen collections of poems, four novels, one book of auto-poetic essays. He was translated into eight European languages. Winner of more than fifteen Serbian and international awards. Still, he repeatedly continues checking the key for Slavic and Mediterranean codes he carries within

By: Branislav Matić

is inner poetic landscape is built of images of faraway suburbs and sights of the metropolis. He loves dovecots, wells, mansards, flea markets. Amidst all that, he built his house of Bach’s music. He is a “purebred natural monk”, hermit of his large library and paintings’ collection, his personal museum. He knows that artificiality has the seducing power of a mermaid, whom, prior to the gold of matureness, he often couldn’t or didn’t want to resist. Later he studied the symmetry of whirlpools, controlling volcanoes, the eros of transgression. He understood the secret of repeating words and images. He penetrated the surrealism of everyday life. With his black ink and German “Senator” fountain pen, he continuously upgrades the world, serves to the Creator. In trains, hotel rooms, in a pastry shop in Požega, in Dorćol, Belgrade, during his journeys through Europe. He stepped out several times and perceived our nest over the abyss. Brought us his correct phantasms. Dragan Jovanović Danilov (Požega, 1960) is one of the most important Serbian and European poets today. We have been talking with him and his book ever since the young shaggy years of the previous millennium.

Beginnings, crossroads. My parents worked as teachers in the remote villages of Sandžak, and then settled in the village of Godovik near Požega, where I spent my childhood. Of course there were some books in our home, but the fact that I come from a teachers’ family didn’t support my personal myth about the literary world. Since I was a good football, especially mini football player in my youth, my father heartily supported me in it. I was very close to going to Baltimore, U.S. in the early 1980s, upon the recommendation of Srboljub Stamenković, legend of our mini football, to become a professional player. I had an invitation from the people there, but at the time I was already reading serious books, painting, visiting exhibitions in Belgrade, writing essays about painters. Today I’m intimately proud of staying here. Finally, every choice is the only choice.

Photo: Guest’s Archive

Waking Up of Small Towns – It is true that Belgrade has a crucial importance for Serbian metaculture. However, Serbia is not just Belgrade. Serbia cannot go forward before it invests into its many small cities, towns with small dimensions, yet important centers, because they have bright orientations and enlightened souls.

L I F E ,

N O V E L S Our nests over the abyss. It is good for a sensitive boy to grow up in a small town. The life in Požega truly shaped my identity. And the fact that my parents were teachers. My language, my friends, my aspiration towards French culture, the streets I pass every day, my daughters, my library, paintings’ collection, all this deeply shapes my identity. The center of events is where your home is, your library, garden, the woman you love, your children. My greatest treasure is the time I created for myself for reading and writing. Nowadays we all live in our own small private nests hanging over the abyss.

and a city for self-contemplation. Actually, Belgrade is not something material for me. It is more of a feeding life force, an authentic place in which one can still have dreams. Belgrade has been preoccupying me for a long time. In terms of civilization, it is one of the richest cities in the world, a city that offers enormous possibilities for literary shaping. A city with sediments of numerous identities. I attempted to offer a vertical sounding of those identities. In order to be able to write about Belgrade, it had to become my inner city. I also experience it as a dream dictionary, a catalog of collective subconscious, a Shaped by small towns. I don’t have unique encyclopedia, whose pages I leaf the Ulysses complex of wandering. I love through with greatest excitement. We all being in one place, concentrated on my create our own Belgrade. I love the fact work. In my poem “Room Carried on that Belgrade is not perfumed and preWings”, there is a verse: “I’m a passen- cious, packed and polished, such as, for ger when I don’t move from my place.” example, Zurich. It’s neither flirty nor cold. Miljenko Stančić, painter close to my It has a kind of naturalness and genuineheart, nicely said: “The province is my ness, a kind of patina and charm. It is the measure.” A small town truly has its mea- central point of a fateful area. Despite all, sure and its character. One is surrounded as I already said before, it is the biggest with dimensions close to human propor- Balkan gathering point of ideas, a lens that tions, such as those that existed in healthy magnifies the unity of diversity and divercities of the past. There is a Hellenic wise sity of unity. A view of the whole world saying that a city mustn’t be larger than spreads from Belgrade, from Kalemegdan. the reach of an echo of the human voice. A small town is a kind of a mandala, arWith sparkle in the eyes. While I was chetypical cosmogram. And an arche- a student in Belgrade, I never set foot in type can never be exploited. Today, when the then famous night clubs, such as “Akaspiritual movements are mostly epidemic, demija” (they used to call it “The Hole”), staying in the loneliness of endemism is “Zvezda”, “Nana” or “Duga”. I wasn’t intermost of all an issue of aesthetic honor. ested in such places. What I was interestThe hidden strength is in human solitude, ed in were antique shops, libraries, green where only restless thought and passion markets and flea markets. A city needs a can fire up language. fair, market, bazaar, theater to be joyful and blazing, a ritual that will revive and save it Views of Belgrade, external and inter- from boredom. That is why I love Bajloni nal. I live both in Požega and Belgrade, so and Kalenić markets, especially the spaI’m half Požega, half Dorćol writer. I inti- cious flea market in Zemun on Sundays mately experience Belgrade as a loved one from 4 to 9 a.m. There, in the markets, you can best see how poorly Belgrade lives today. You cannot live without a sparkle in Art of Football your eyes. A sparkle in the eyes is the only – Football is a game with much poetry, a merge of male sharpthing that cannot be forged.

ness, supreme refinedness and poetics. What Borges once said about literature is also convenient to say for the art of football. Truly, football is the impersonation of order and adventure. Besides presenting the chosen selection of life, the greatest football players such as Cruyff, Zico or Maradona, are in a way the last romanticists with a fantasy (like great writers) and the power to elevate the football game onto a higher, spiritual level.

Nonconformity. I have, basically, always been a loner. I’d define my relation to the world as a kind of painful nonconformity. I found it very hard, especially in my youth. During my studies, I felt deep disgust towards academism and collec-

tive infection. I studied at the Faculty of Philosophy Art History Department and at the Faculty of Law, and dropped out of both. Already then I knew that the only real education for a writer is selfeducation. I began writing poetry out of fear from everyday life, which I couldn’t handle easily. I believed that a poet has to keep himself from the determination of a social group, from the world he was entangled in, whether he wanted it or not. That no law iss applicable to the one who is differentiated and separated. Mysteries of the heart. We, Serbs, don’t find ourselves in the scale of the Caucasian race, humans with strong nerves, bright mind and joyful confidence, destroying chaos and dark magma. We have passionate, vigorous blood, we are easily irritated, so that even small things can make a storm in our physis. We purify everything in our heart. Wounds are the best way to feel the world. A poem bursts suddenly, like an illness. Everything in poetry is so unmasked and vulnerable. Thus a lyrical poem is a cruel literary truth. Writing poetry is icecold noting of what is essentially fire. I believe that what I write comes from the

intuitive comprehension of religion, mu-  Danilov (second sic and light. I say I believe, because the from the left) with his father, sister things I write are vague and unknown to me as well. Poetry, by its nature, must be and mother, 1970s erotic, like music. Genuine, living poetry stands opposite from any sexual coldness. I experience poetry as pansophia, omniwisdom, religion, because it provokes a feeling of complete addiction in me. A human isn’t given to fathom the mysteries of justness, gentleness, love, God, poetry. They are not visible. They are only known to the human heart. The psalmist, remember, mentions “the thoughts of the heart” (the place of unwritten law), meaning that God gave humans a heart for thinking. I believe that one good poem can heal the reader. Schleiermacher sees the ultimate limits of the possible in poetry. We can go even further and say: when we write a genuine, powerful poem, we step out of time. Embrace of life and death. I see my poems as dialogues with oblivion. As small human truths that either hurt or light up. As a poet, I am deeply pervaded with Mediterraneanism and Hellenism. In my work, I want to unite and reconcile

L I F E ,

N O V E L S

 With daughters Sofija and Izabela

the Slavic Dionysian fury and Germanic dedication to work. The sight is actually a differently shaped reality, with which our imagination gilds the world. My poetry writing technique is almost painting-like. When I have a sharp, clear sight, I can draw an entire poem from the darkness to the light of the day. The biggest problem of a poet is how to bring strictness and freedom into harmony. Before, I had many things loose, in blossom, baroque fioriture and ornaments. I longed for a spectacular image and good ornaments. In time, somehow by themselves, poems were hewed, polished and became sharper. My laws in writing today are: complete control over emotional enthusiasm, preciseness of verse and, before all, truthfulness of the

Beauty – Plotinus gave the most wonderful definition of beauty. He said that beauty is “blossoming of a being”. Beauty excites because it’s elusive and because we are completely unprotected from it.

testimony. Real poetry must show the embrace of life and death. Consecration of the world. My ideal in poetry is a poetic text as a magical spiritualization of life. A poem that will be alive like the pounding of a human heart. A poet invests his entire soul, and the poem returns, as an echo, something he didn’t even anticipate exists. Good, living poems travel through time. Only dangerously intelligent people can write great poetry. Only lots of love and sorrow or enlightenment can ascend a being towards great poetry with general value. Poetry for me is a form of mystical experience, a prism to express intransient beauty and mediate an almost new form of religiousness. Poetry does not replace life. It denies and transforms it. Writing poetry is not a game. It is a serious choice and salutary deviance. A refined form of compassion. It has to express the warmth that makes us humans, the glow “from beyond this world”. Poetry hallows the vegetativeanimal-social world. It is the fine thread

between wish and death. Each poem is a form of saying goodbye to life. For me, poetry is the highest degree of preparing for the departure from this world. Handwritten, at dusk. I feel comfortable with the handwriting process. I love the process when black ink dries on the paper. (Unfortunately, there are less and less good inks. Germans make the best ones, by the way.) I wrote some of my best poems in the train, since I frequently travel from Požega to Belgrade and back. I don’t have the energy for writing twenty-four hours a day. So I wait for the moment when I’m concentrated inside, which is most often at dusk. That’s when I’m most sensitive for writing poetry. It is the magical hour when it’s neither day nor night and when light and darkness hand over mysterious fluids to each other. Therefore I try to grab the time of dusk for myself. The crisis of male and female. Whether highly demanding or completely unambi-

tious, a woman radiates with her being and thus almost unnoticeably influences history, the world, plants. Not to mention the supreme biological mission of a woman. She gives birth to life. She is a mother, sister, mistress, wife, daughter, goddess, poetess, artist. A female artist or poet is a double being, worthy of greatest respect. I am a male feminist, matriarch and motherophile, so I have the right to despise extremely feminist women. With so many conflicts and wastage in the world, why have another one – between man and woman? A woman is the essential grace of life. Intelligent artists cultivate their sensi-

 With French writer Patrick Besson

Salubrity of Defeat – Every human, naturally, likes praises, because they inappropriately bloat our self-respect and strengthen our ridiculous certainty that we are important and that eternity must definitely count on us. Awards can also socialize writers in a terrible way, making them make-believe dignified personalities. Oh, how worthless our victories are and how we’re blessed only with our defeats! Poets are not there just to receive gifts, but to give them to others as well.

L I F E ,

N O V E L S bility through relations with women. My ideal is a noble, refined woman, who will carve a new face of a man with her intelligence, virtues and high demands. However, we live in a time of feminized men and mannish women. This is not a time ruled by female virtues, which proved to be tragic. A woman that has. Love is a complex emotion, combination and reconciliation of egoism and altruism, a feeling that no one has managed to explain for centuries, despite so many books and libraries. It’s not easy to accomplish complete love, therefore we are always in search for it. I don’t like poets who idealize and beatify a woman in their self-illusive trance, who ascend it to a pedestal of an unapproachable, surphysical spirituality. That is, in fact, running away from a woman. The only beautiful woman for me is the one who is real and physical, a woman who is not a dark deception, illusion, mask, pseudos. I see a woman as the physical and mental Venus. A woman is most beautiful when the long forgotten heavenly, ancient being of a woman wakes up in her physicality. I found such love in Andrijana Videnović, actress and diction professor, with whom I’ve been sharing my life for several years now. Digital apocalypse. There is a nice old saying: “A child is the father of a man.” It is a deep truth. The poem “Our Children”, which provokes most reactions when I read it at poetry evenings, speaks about the destructive potential of aggressiveness and manipulation of our children, mostly turned towards a world of false values. It indicates that goodness and humaneness in life are checked as gold in fire and

Raven and Thunders – While writing my poem “Thunders”, I projected a dynamic energy state, which pervaded me already in my childhood, when I, hidden at the attic, listened to the powerful roaring of thunder. On one hand, I felt fear, and on the other wished to hear the powerful sound again, with which I obviously had a sensual, even erotic connection. Later, as a young man, I found such force while reading ancient poets. I’d feel as if affronting something enormous and dizzying. I was greatly astonished when, while reading “Popol Vuh”, I discovered that the raven, a bird that obsesses me, is actually the herald of thunder and lightning.

raises a question about our responsibility in all this. We are leaving our children closed museums and open internet, which can be compared to the appearance of atomic energy in the 1950s. We are living in a time of digital apocalypse, becoming post-analphabets, when reading is mostly replaced with search engines. Books teach us how to be alone and how to concentrate within, with ourselves. Roots of derangement. The history of culture is nothing but a history of the ancient conflict between rationalist and esoteric lodges. Rationalism spread to France from the English mainland (I mean Lock) and conquered the European soil through enlightenment philosophers. Positivism and existentialism, two philosophical stands within contemporary academic philosophy, made a real plague. God does not exist for existentialists, a life which is basically meaningless belongs only to the human and the human is responsible for his choices. Positivism relies on the fact that everything can be understood through science and mathematics. Both exclusive philosophies are completely unfamiliar with the great spiritual truths of mankind. By the way, it seems to me that it is no accident that the ideas of enlightenment philosophers had a crucial influence on the founders of America (the dogmatic secular super-state) Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine or Benjamin Franklin. Both existentialists and positivists despise mythology, alchemy and mysticism. Same is with contemporary philosophy and science. With their narrow views, existentialists and positivists are powerless to recognize the existence of an entire continent of mystic experience. Pretentious philosophical speculation, completely alienated from the values of everyday life, is repelled by mystical experience, because it defies “pure mind” in all levels. Contemporary philosophers and scientists, always quick to underestimate religious and metaphysical traditions, simply don’t understand the true nature of alchemical symbolism, representing the spiritual transformations possible in a human. Therefore we find representations of diseases and European derangement behind the illusions of rationalism and enlightenment.

Agony of the worn-out world. The twentieth century turned to be a century of destruction in many realms of human life. Rational and technological thought repressed the magical. Today people have forgotten that art is an alchemic activity and that a poem is a psychological area of a being. We are today living an eerie agony of a worn-out and exhausted world. This is not even an era of decadence. It is a time clearly showing how much the primordial sources are exhausted. Furthermore, enormous gaps were created between generations. I know the curse of “scholar culture” well, but how good would it be if our culture were as scholar as, for example, German. Germans are good teachers in how to admire and assume.

It’s not too late. It’s sad that the lottery of history has granted us the most wonderful area on earth, yet we didn’t use it for our economic prosperity. Work, duty and discipline are axes around which the world revolves, not reality shows and temporary pleasures of life. We became tragically undone, obscured with demonolatry, prone to pessimistic despondency which, luckily, still hasn’t turned into nihilism. Serbia as a metaculture didn’t achieve even the tenth part of it potentials. We, as a nation, have a pretty difficult metahistorical process ahead of us, steps towards illuminating consciousness. We’ll either descend to even deeper magmas or ascend to high layers and transmyths. 

 The meaning of repeating words and pictures: Danilov today

B E L V E D E R E S BERISLAV BLAGOJEVIĆ, WRITER, ONE OF THE IMPORTANT NEW VOICES OF REPUBLIKA SRPSKA

Literature Has Its Powers

Reading means caring about oneself, becoming better. Truly valuable literature explores and uplifts, deepens and helps. The problem is not in trivial literature, it has always existed in different epochs; the problem is in the fact that it was turned into a dangerous poisoning instrument, pushed into the foreground, aggressively advertised as high culture and the only value. Trash has to be taxed, the hierarchy of values needs to be established and genuine culture should be provided a fair fight. In spite of problems, many unique authors have appeared in Srpska, and they are somehow cutting their way through

e writes prose, poetry, essays and literary critiques. In a very short time, he managed to leave a visible trace in literature. He won several awards and his works were translated into Spanish, Polish, English, German, Italian, Japanese, Macedonian and Maltese. It’s no wonder, since he writes about common things and eternal subjects. Critics emphasize that his prose is joyful and cruel at the same time and that it hits straight into the heart. His new book is expected to be published  In Banjaluka, in September, and it will be his first time in next to the the role of a children’s writer. A manuscript monument to of his short stories is also ready. In the meanBranko Ćopić time, he reads a lot and only sometimes (1915–1984) writes a thing or two.

Why is reading important? Reading is not something outdated and anachronous, reading is not a feature of losers, geeks and asocial people. Reading means caring about oneself, making yourself not only a smarter, but also a better person. That is exactly what writing, reading and participating in literary life has brought me: I got to know myself better, I dare say that I have truly become a better man, and met marvelous people and writers along the way. Literature took me, as a reader, to fantastic places (some of which, of course, do not exist), and as a writer to some wonderful landscapes and cities. Literature in the true sense of the word has uplifted my life and I will always be grateful to it for this.

Biography

You once said that you don’t believe that printed word is less appreciated today, but that it’s a fact that the number of those who care about it has decreased? There are multiple reasons why the culture of reading is in a crisis, but I cannot shake off the feeling that one of the most important ones is that people who read are simply not the interest of those who bring decisions (on global or local level). Books

By: Sandra Kljajić

He grew up and went to school in Brod, Pančevo and Banjaluka, where he lives today. His most important works are short stories “Revolutionary” (also published as an audio book), novel “Quieter than Water”, book of poetry “We in the Fog”, novel “Boomerang”… He is winner of several awards and recognitions, including the scholarship of the “Borislav Pekić” Fund and Annual Award for the best book granted by the Association of Writers of Republika Srpska. His first novel “Quieter than Water” was shortlisted for the 2013 NIN award.

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 At the Book Fair in Thessaloniki

and magazines are nurseries of ideas, they ignite imagination, develop critical thinking. All this is in opposition to the contemporary concept of the world, in which average man is treated as a kind of slave and consumer of everything, not as a being who should and can think with his own head and undertake activities. It is a several-decades long trend of shaping consciousness and economy. Another important reason for decreased reading is the rapidity of information sharing, in which pictures are media without competition. However, as a rule, a picture is two-dimensional, it doesn’t have depth. Accordingly, a picture offers superficial information, satisfying the minimum need to “keep the pace”, without a possibility of deeper contemplation, especially since one picture is very soon replaced with another. Finally, there is also the question of time. Let’s take, for example, Sundays – big shopping malls work until late in the evening, and accordingly, people who are employed don’t have time for reading even on

Sundays. By the way, thousands of people spend their free time in shopping malls, so potential readers are lost in that way as well. It’s simply like that. Whether because of packed up school programs or a real lack of time, or the general tendency of taking the line of least resistance, even the required reading is not read from cover to cover: students find reduced versions and (very often suspicious) interpretations on the internet. It is no doubt that such a development of events has a fatal effect on the society and that it will further reduce the number of readers. Besides all this, we should add the quality of what is published and read. It is clear that we have stepped into a new era – an era of fighting against non-reading, just as we have fought against illiteracy a hundred years ago, and this problem should be approached as seriously as possible. In that sense, I will quote a sentence I have recently read in a magazine from 1925: it’s not time for changing robes, we should transform the spirit.

THE LIFE OF BOOKS IN THE “AGE OF NON-READING” What is the actual position of literature today? Literature, and I mean the relatively small percentage of truly valuable literary works, has a pretty marginal position, but it still exists. Its role, at least in these lands, is continuously reduced. High quality literary works most often don’t include the sensationalistic spice necessary for a better reception of the audience. Besides, the status of literature is directly related with the status of a writer. In the past, writers were ambassadors, cultural attachés, ministers, their knowledge and opinion about local and foreign affairs was appreciated. Today the very term is devalued, since there are examples of various characters signing themselves as writers even before publishing their first book. In order to enable such “writers” to participate in the literary scene, they constantly emphasize a theory that great writers and great liter-

ary works are a thing of the past, which is, of course, not true. In this context, very important is the status of guilds. I’m not really familiar with the importance of literature in other countries, but I have seen and felt that people are more interested. At a literary evening in Italy, an entire amphitheater of students came to hear more about my translated novel. Promotions of books, so-called readings, are organized in Austria and Germany, where visitors pay an entrance fee. You cannot imagine such a thing here. In such an atmosphere, the influence of literature on society is humble and it shouldn’t be expected that a single book will arouse the masses. However, books can still affect lives of individuals and I’m convinced that it happens every day.

 At “Kočićev zbor”

How can printed word survive in the civilization of pictures, in the “age of nonreading”? I don’t know, but as long as the paradigm that books are something horrible,

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 With Voja Čolanović (1922–2014), his countryman and literary role-model

something boring and anachronous is not changed or rejected, the situation won’t become any better. Reading is a private thing, it is not and cannot be subject to force. However, although we cannot force people to read, it is necessary to at least emphasize the benefits of reading. Youngest readers and adolescents should certainly be in the center of attention. That is when love for reading is born and those who create school programs and select required reading should think about it. Furthermore, it is necessary to regulate certain incentives for publishing, which would lead to more acceptable prices. SUPPORTING GENUINE VALUES Can genuine literature today resist the socalled dictatorship of the market and patronizing the lowest tastes and impulses and how? I am against any kind of dictatorship, including the dictatorship of the market, which has become widespread in our lands as well. However, I’d support a suggestion to additionally tax trash in art. So, I’m against censorship, but in favor of certain measures, which would in a way provide valuable and good publishers, writers and their works a more equal position in the market battle. The so-called easy literature

has always existed, and it always will, there is nothing disputable or tragic in it, but the global trend which glorifies shallow and banal literature is very harmful and dangerous. All that is reflected in the number of copies published. Some truly timeless works have ridiculous circulations of a few hundred copies. As I have already underlined, this problem is enormous and doesn’t concern only writers, but also the educational system, legislation, market economies… There is little we could do at the moment, except to initiate writing and promote good books. Having all this in mind, how do you see the literary scene in Srpska? The literary scene in Republika Srpska has livened up in the past few years. Some new, strong and important voices have appeared, recognized both locally and in the surrounding, and I believe we have reasons for optimism. However, we have a big problem with publishing, marketing and distribution. Most authors from Srpska publish their books in Serbia, because publishers (save honorable exceptions) do not do their jobs properly. In most cases, the author himself pays the printing expenses, so publishers don’t have the need to advertise or distribute books. However, in order not to load the problem on pub-

lishers, we must admit that there are cities and municipalities without a single bookstore, meaning that distribution is difficult even when there is a will. Besides all that, there is a lack of (good) literary magazines in Republika Srpska, which additionally makes the situation more complex and makes it more difficult for young authors to present themselves. How do we preserve small languages and cultures such as ours in the time of globalization, without being modern at any cost in terms of imposed and projected criteria, and at the same time “keep the pace” and write in a way that everyone understands you? It is necessary to write honestly, without patronizing the critics, and readers should be neither underestimated nor overestimated. Perhaps it sounds naive, but I believe that a work will be well received if it is well written, even though it deals with local stories or national subjects of a small nation. It is confirmed by numerous examples: our reader is enthralled by a work of a Chinese author, which is culturally equally distant as Andrić is from a reader from Bolivia. However, that is the very quality of literature – it connects, permeates, enriches – and due to that fact, the reader from Bolivia can intimately

experience The Bridge on the Drina. The first and main assignment is therefore a high-quality text. The second assignment is translating, which is pretty problematic, especially in the case of authors from Republika Srpska. The translated works of our authors are such a rarity, that they’re on the level of a statistical error. When they do appear, the reactions are very positive. Tanja Stupar Trifunović’s novel was already translated into several languages, thanks to the European Literature Award, and critics and reception of the audience are more than favorable. The translation of my novel Quieter than Water also got

 At a literary evening

Geography You hold a MSc degree in geography, and this science permeates your works in different ways. Do you have time for investigative works? Geography is my first great love. Unfortunately, I don’t have enough time to dedicate myself to serious investigations. I published my last original scientific work in 2016 in Belgrade, although last year I published a work which is an interesting merge of library, geography and other sciences: “The Importance of Digitalization of Library Material for Users-Investigators: The Example of the City of Brod”. Whenever I have the opportunity, I try to deal with geography in any way, especially the cultural-geographical issues. There are many aspects of interesting geographical investigations today, even something called literary geography. I am attracted by the idea of connecting literature and geography on a scientific level.

B E L V E D E R E S good critiques in Italy, it was shortlisted for the award in Turin and had two editions (and only one in Serbian!). These and other examples show that our writers have something to say and that there are interested people on the other side who wish to learn about our contemporary literature. Accordingly, it is not necessary to write according to an imposed pattern. Moreover, authenticity can bring a certain advantage. SHAPED WITH MUSIC

Photo: Sandra Kljajić and guest’s archive

When speaking about your works, critics accentuate the variety of subjects, different techniques and forms of narration, as well as authenticity. You write about the fates of “small”, “ordinary” people and your homeland, with an important role of music, remote places, Voja Čolanović… Why did they all find their place in your works? The plots of Quieter than Water and Boomerang take place in these lands, whereas the place of the first is not certain, and the latter is a kind of a biography of Brod, with historical and geographical details and toponyms. Contrary to novels, my short stories very often write about other lands: Georgia, Poland, Philippines, Ukraine… In that way I wish to show the degree of similarity between people, how our histories are often entwined, although it cannot be noticed at first glance, and, what’s especially important, how much the fates of ordinary, so-called small people are similar or the same everywhere. My literary preoccupation is primarily related to these lands, but I am not insensitive to problems and fates of people in other corners of the planet. The point is in the experience – if the writer doesn’t genuinely feel it, the story will be tense, insincere, bad. I sometimes place the plot somewhere far away, while I’m actually writing about us. It’s also possible because, however specific it is, the Balkans are not the only land with the problems of wars, transition, ethnic and religious diversities. The main question is how to carry out a story and present it to the readers. In that sense, Voja Čolanović was a real master, supreme stylist, erudite, expert in everything. Čolanović was born in Bosanski Brod, where we met in mid-1990s, and due

to such circumstances I was introduced to his work very early, already as a high school student. I owe a lot to Čolanović, mainly for a superior reading pleasure, as well as for stylistic directions, and inspiration in the ways of using language. He is my role model in many aspects, but I will certainly never copy Čolanović’s style, because it would be a complete debacle. Voja Čolanović is the one and only! Brod has connected us, however, unlike me, who wrote a lot about my hometown, Čolanović was the supreme “writer of Belgrade” (and Belgrade writer, of course). Music in literature is also something that connects us. I love using music references in writing, especially giving them a functional role in the narrative. It seems that the combination of human fates of the so-called ordinary people, geography, music, style and language I use in my writing led to it being characterized as authentic. I believe that is one of the greatest compliments a writer could get. You have done various jobs (never professionally-relevant), and your employment as doorman in the Children’s Theater has attracted the biggest attention of the public. How did those jobs affect your writing or inspire you? Every job can be a valuable experience. If a job is difficult and/or inadequate for some reason, one finds it very difficult. However, after a while, it is possible to take out many positive things from such experiences. Before my job in the Children’s Theater, I spent ten years in a company which manufactures and distributes protective equipment. There were difficult days, but there were also wonderful people I met, support during postgraduate studies and first writing successes, life stories of good and hard-working women who will, perhaps, in some form find their place between covers. My job as a doorman was brought into the center of attention because I won the Annual Award of the Association of Writers of Republika Srpska for the best book (for my novel Boomerang) at the time. To be honest, I felt uncomfortable because a “story” was made of all that, since nobody paid attention to the book. However, that job also brought me many wonderful experiences and acquaintances. 